Get Your Deoxyribonucleic Acid Here!
Kevin Kelly at the Technium:
As far as I can tell, if you visited my home today it is legal for me to slyly snatch an "abandoned" sample of DNA from you (from the lip of a cup, a fallen hair, etc.), sequence it in full, and publish your DNA online for the world to read. Of course I wouldn't do that, but in April 2008, a seller on eBay peddled the remains of Barak Obama's restaurant breakfast claiming that "his DNA is on the silverware."
In England a new law prohibiting "DNA theft" makes this stealthy genetic sequencing illegal. But in the US only 8 states have any restrictions at all on sequence others' DNA (California is not one of them), and these restrictions are neither clear, consistent, nor absolute.
This is another area in which we are due to get blindsided by technology. We leave DNA everywhere, and the technology for gene sequencing is getting cheaper and cheaper. The idea that you can outlaw the practice of picking up cells left in some public area and looking at them in a gene sequencer might become as ridiculous and unenforceable as trying to outlaw taking someone’s picture in a public area.
Imagine trying to make it illegal to pick up a hair someone left on your couch and looking at it in a microscope.
— Michael Straight · Jan 29, 10:50 PM · #
Congress can do it! All they’ve got to do is ban DNA.
— Ethan C. · Jan 30, 12:05 AM · #