this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
440 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
59187 readers
2004 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I see no problem with that. Idk what's newsworthy here tbh.
The problem is that just because you are ok with sharing your data (even if you don't understand the potential consequences), your close family and any decendants aren't able to consent or not consent to their shared genetic data being given to these corporations.
How would you feel about your children being unable to get insurance coverage because a close relative used the service and the insurance company decided they were at too high risk for expensive medical problems due to similarity of genes?
Just pissed off at the insurers, as usual. But seeing it as a data privacy issue misdirects from the actual problem, which is the genetic discrimination and lack of proper regulation (if that would to ever happen). We don't need to go to hypothetical scenarios of insurance companies scavenging for genetic data - they could simply start demanding genetic tests upon sign-up, which would void the whole "data leak through relatives" discussion and give them a reliable and legitimate dataset.
To be clear, this is a made-up scenario that would be illegal under current US law.
Companies break laws all the time. The punishment is frequently small compared to profits from the crime.
Vague nihilism doesn't dispute what I said
The law here is inconsequential. The only protection that is certain is for the data not to exist.
It's very much not.
Are you sure?
Yes. The issue you pointed to is being investigated after all. And there are potential damages if they are found to be violating the law.
Did it potentially being illegal actually stop it from happening?
It does stop other things from happening. So how do you square that circle? Or hopefully you can see that your simplistic thinking isn't terribly useful?
Source please!
"Prove a negative, please!"
Fuck outta here
You're asking them to explain why the rule of law discourages behaviours deemed to be against the law. You should be able to find evidence for that yourself, it's an elementary tenet of any judicial system.
You want me to provide a list of laws that insurance companies are not currently violating?
How about the one that you say they will violate? They've been not violating that for years since it was passed.
You don’t need 23&Me to do sketchy stuff for this to happen. They’ll just get your DNA from another blood test. They could simply provide a sizable discount to those who enroll and make the premium for “non genetic” insurance rather high in comparison.
It’s one of the most stable physical data formats. It’s not hard to get someone’s DNA, nor is it hard to analyze these days. You also don’t need DNA to discriminate; they can just find parallel traits and use those.
I dunno, none of this worries me that much. DNA is not that special in my mind. I leave it everywhere I go. It’s not private data - most people just don’t know how to read it.