I have my genetic info on 23andMe and I could not care less.
Seriously — what are people going to do with it? It's illegal for insurance companies to discriminate. I'd post it myself on GitHub if anyone showed the slightest interest in using it.
Did you also predict, 10 years ago, that so many states would an abortion ?
Get back to your crystal ball and tell me when the war in Ukraine will end and how much will a btc be worth in 5 and 10 years
If people in this forum believe Musk when he says fully autonomous vehicles will be there in two years (since 2012) and that the AI singularity is coming this decade, the possibility of genetic testing being extended to pre conditions isn't so crazy
Insurance companies don’t care so long as all their competitors have to play by the same rules. Insurance co decisionmaking is sometimes counterintuitive.
Genetic data will definitely be used to limit freedom of movement somewhere on Earth in the next 25 years. We’ve already been mass-swabbing for COVID for the past three years, so it won’t be that big a change.
That's great, feel free to do that. Many others would rather keep their ancestry or genetic attributes out of the public eye. Maybe it's a source of pain for them, or is required for personal safety reasons. And just because something is illegal doesn't mean it won't happen. Legal "workarounds" are a thing. How watertight is the legislation and practice around preventing employers from taking a peek? Or having someone else take a peek for them?
A concrete example: What could the consequences in today's USA political climate be of having a massive database be with columns: Firstname, Lastname, y_chromosome_present.
> It's illegal for insurance companies to discriminate.
Only for health insurance. Other types of insurance companies are free to use that data to discriminate against you, include life, disability, and long-term care insurance.
The problem with this situation is A) precisely that you don't know what people are going to do with it, and B) that once it's out there it's impossible to undo that.
You're confident enough that nothing can be done, to the point that you'd take the risk for no upside. That... doesn't sound rational to me?
And we now (hypothetically, in the context of leaking genetic info) know Meryem is Uyghur, James is trans, and Alex is related to a deeply divisive political figure.
Yes, my background is in publishing open government data, such as budgets, election results, environmental info, economic data, and government program accountability studies. Not personal information. And yes, I do have strong opinions on how data is to be responsibly managed, hence my participation in this conversation. So, I'm curious if you have additional thoughts on the matter.
I see where you're going with your point, but my gut feeling is none of that data is anything new.
We know where Meryem was born (govt records which you probably helped make public), we can read James' twitter feed and we know the relatives of political figures (except for all the illegitimate children).
If you'd like to make an argument that my work led to the publication of personal records, please make it more explicitly. I'd love to hear it fully articulated. Otherwise it's hard for me to read it as anything beyond a swipe.
We are assuming James posted such details to a public twitter feed. That does not account for the others who did not. The issue in Meryem's case is that obtaining birth records is not guaranteed (especially from a foreign country), and that birth location isn't the same as genetic ancestry. Regarding Alex:
> except for all the illegitimate children
That is part of my point. If my absent parent were actually some famous politician, I would personally not want to have that information leaked. Some might not care - that's great. My point is a simple one - just because having private medical info exfiltrated is not really a big deal for many people, doesn't mean that it's ok to give a pass to the parties responsible for the exfiltration.
Sorry, it isn't a swipe directly intended to be a personal attack of any sort. More that govt's, in general, have a habit of leaking personal information for their own benefit.
Your original comment was all about hypotheticals, so yes, it opens up the discussion to assumptions.
Agreed that, in general, it sucks that stuff leaks out. That said, every time someone brings up 23andme, it feels like one of those "the govt is going to shut down in a week if we don't do something!" type of headlines that seem to be on repeat... where in the end it turns out that at the last minute, something is done to prevent it, and everything turns into a giant nothing burger.
Seriously — what are people going to do with it? It's illegal for insurance companies to discriminate. I'd post it myself on GitHub if anyone showed the slightest interest in using it.