DNA firms ought to obtain the dying penalty for getting hacked
Private knowledge is the brand new gold. The current 23andMe data breach is a stark reminder of a chilling actuality – our most intimate, private data won’t be as safe as we expect. It’s a damning indictment of the sheer negligence of firms that, whereas cashing in on our DNA, are failing to guard it.
The 23andMe breach noticed hackers getting access to a whopping 6.9 million customers’ private data, together with household bushes, beginning years and geographic areas. It brings to the fore just a few important questions: Are firms actually doing sufficient to guard our knowledge? Ought to we belief them with our most intimate data?
Corporations are promising to maintain our knowledge secure, however there are a few quirks right here. Authorities overreach is actually a chance, because the FBI and each policing company on the planet might be salivating on the considered gaining access to such an enormous knowledge set of DNA sequences. It could possibly be a gold mine for each chilly case from right here to the south pole.
The argument “However if you happen to haven’t finished one thing flawed, you don’t have anything to fret about!” is just partially relevant, right here: The issue is one among consent. My father at one level did a DNA check, and found he had a half-brother who’s about to show 80. Cue an unimaginable quantity of household drama once they began digging into the historical past and unearthed a complete bunch of probably problematic household historical past.
The issue isn’t a lot that my dad selected to do this, it’s that I didn’t consent to being in a database, and that’s the place issues get sticky. I can envision a particular Black Mirror-esque future, the place one member of the family is interested by their ancestry, will get examined, and two weeks later, the FBI comes knocking on each particular person’s door who shares 50% DNA with that particular person as a result of they’re wished for some kind of crime.
The audacity of 23andMe, and corporations prefer it, is astounding. They pitch themselves as guardians of our genetic historical past, because the gatekeepers of our ancestral pasts and potential medical futures. However when the chips are down and our knowledge is leaked, they disguise behind the outdated “we weren’t hacked; it was the customers’ outdated passwords” excuse.
This logic is equal to a financial institution saying, “It’s not our fault your cash acquired stolen; it’s best to have had a greater lock in your entrance door.” It’s unacceptable and a gross abdication of accountability.
The truth that the stolen knowledge was marketed as an inventory of individuals with ancestries which have, up to now, been victims of systemic discrimination, provides one other disturbing layer to this debacle. It highlights the potential for such knowledge to be misused in essentially the most nefarious methods, together with focused assaults and discrimination.
The DNA testing trade must step up. It should be certain that the security measures in place will not be simply sufficient, however distinctive. They need to be main the cost in cybersecurity, setting an instance for all different industries to observe.
This isn’t nearly higher passwords or two-factor authentication. That is a few basic shift in how these firms view the info they’re entrusted with. It’s about recognizing the profound accountability they’ve, not simply to their clients, however to society at giant.
Am I hopeful? Not even a bit of. I’ve lengthy argued that after the Equifax breach, the corporate ought to have obtained the company equal of the dying penalty. As an alternative, it was given a $700 million fantastic. I feel that’s laughable. Permitting a breach of such a magnitude to even be doable, by no means thoughts truly come to cross? You don’t should proceed to be an organization. I feel that’s even more true for firms coping with our DNA.
It’s time for 23andMe and the DNA testing trade as a complete to understand that they don’t seem to be simply coping with knowledge. They’re coping with folks’s lives, their histories and their futures. It’s time they began treating our knowledge with the respect and care it deserves.
