How a person’s DNA can become public information

Dear Readers,

 

Every day, our privacy rights shrink. 9/11

started us down a slippery slope of government intrusiveness into our phone

calls and emails. Facebook and Google store our personal information and search

parameters. But, it is much worse than this.

Take our DNA. In some states, your DNA information is

obtained just based on an arrest and your DNA is put into a state and then

national database.

This, many of you might find, is inoffensive, since an

arrest is a breach of our societal compact … except, when an arrest is

wrongful!

This, though, is just the pebble in the stream when it comes to genetic

coding.

First, as I have reported before, companies are trying to

patent genetic coding or sequencing. Yep, companies want to own a piece of you

and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it – except hope that jurists

end this foolish legal “invasion of the body snatchers.”

Second, though, and I will bet even more unsettling, your

genetic data could eventually be identified publicly. Maybe not intentionally,

but depending on how genetic samples are handled, your identity, and your

family’s, might end up on the web.

This is exactly what has happened with the international

“open source” DNA information-sharing cooperative called the “1,000 Genomes

Project.” This project’s mission statement include a descriptive comment that

“The genomes of about 2,500 unidentified people from about 25 populations

around the world will be sequenced using next-generation sequencing

technologies. The results of the study will be freely and publicly accessible

to researchers worldwide.”

The word “unidentified” might comfort the participant

volunteers. However, DNA sequencing is so unique, the genetic footprint can be

matched with individual persons by comparing results with genetic family trees.

According to a recent New York Times article on the subject,

commenting on a recent article published in the journal Science, all that was

required to do this was a “long string of DNA letters, an age, and because the

study focused on only American subjects, a state.”

I suppose we can envision genealogy trees exclusively

generated from DNA sequencing analysis instead of poring over census data and

vessel travel manifests.

This idea of being “exposed” also applies to the decisions and choices we make

everyday. As a result of public data being readily available, nothing about us

is sacred.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, this new world of

individual transparency was laid bare when a local New York newspaper published

a list of gun owners in its community. Outrage, probably correctly, followed,

but this list was culled from publicly available information. This also lends

credence to concerns of gun rights’ advocates that gun registration would

eventually become a sword turned against them.

Yet, the amount of information publicly available pales with

what we readily give away in social and financial commerce. All the data we

provide in internet commerce and on social media sites is priceless and bought

and sold by sophisticated companies mining our personal choices to sell this

information to each other, further eroding our privacy rights.

Soon, we may find that advertisements on television or radio

are micro targeted to us based on analysis provided by “smart” software of what

magazines we read, what choices we make on Netflix, or groceries we purchase

with our merchant cards. We are already seeing robust use of our personal

information in political campaigns, more expansive mining of our personal

information will undoubtedly soon follow. Facebook and Google are already using

data mining to target advertising when we check on our friends or search the

web.

Finally, there is “Big Brother” watching vigilant for signs

of terrorism in our emails and phone calls. All of this data is collected and

reviewed by government security analysts. Attempts to limit the scope of this

invasion of our or rights recently failed when laws permitting this

governmental spying were renewed by Congress.

This, then, is our world. One that seems smaller and one to

which we will need to adjust, a bit of an uncomfortable concept.

Local attorney Jim Rockefeller owns the Rockefeller Law Center

and is a former Houston Co. Chief Assistant District Attorney, and a former

Miami Prosecutor. Visit www.rockefellerlawcenter.com to submit confidential

legal questions, and to review former articles and Frequently Asked Questions.

HHJ News