Various corners of the media and internet are hyperventilating over the alleged genetic privacy implications of the imminent Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe.
"Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now," yelps a headline over at The Washington Post. Why? "Unless you take action, there is a risk your genetic information could end up in someone else's hands—and used in ways you had never considered," ominously warns Post journalist Geoffrey Fowler. NPR reports that Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, advises that any concerned 23andMe customers should delete their data, request that their saliva sample be destroyed, and revoke any permissions they may have given to use their genetic information for research. "This is just the first example of a company like this with tremendous amounts of sensitive data being bought or sold," she added. California Attorney General Rob Bonta urgently issued a consumer alert reminding "Californians of their right to direct the deletion of their genetic data under the Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)."
Calm down people. Genetic data are not especially toxic or extraordinarily dangerous. Nor are the privacy implications all that dire, especially compared to other widely available and easily deployed surveillance tools. It is true that your genome is a permanent and immutable marker of your personal identity, but so too are your fingerprints and your face. The FBI's Next Generation Identification system contains the fingerprints of more than 186 million criminal, civil, and military individuals. (As a twenty-something, I worked briefly as a federal bureaucrat so my fingerprints are definitely in the system.) While fingerprints have to be collected onsite and compared using offsite databases, facial recognition cameras with real-time database matching can become ubiquitous, able to track you nearly everywhere you go in public. Your face may be your passport but it's also your snitch.
