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There is no concept of "genome security" because you leave your genome everywhere you've ever been. If someone wants your genome and is willing to spend the money to sequence it, they've got it. Let's estimate 6pg of DNA per cell and that we need 100ng of DNA for sequencing. Rounded up that means 20000 cells left behind. That means you cannot leave a single hair, fingernail clipping, feces, etc anywhere that you do not trust to destroy them.


There's a massive difference between chasing down one person's DNA and gaining unwarranted access to a consolidated database of millions of genomes.


I'd pose the question, why? From a personal privacy perspective you have a lot more to worry about from the determined actor targeting you than a data breach in which your genome (likely not even linked to any other PII if they have set up their database correctly) is just another entry in a sea of data. On the other side of the the coin, those individually worthless genomes could become valuable to the furthering of medical science if you can collect them in mass and start to look at statistical trends.


You have to multiply the expected cost of a privacy violation by the probability of that violation. A targeted attack is exceptionally rare for the vast majority of people. But in a dragnet, the probability is essentially 1.

We can have the benefits of statistical research on our private information without handing the keys to the kingdom over to malicious actors.




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