Don’t Buy California’s Callous Attempt to Ignore People’s DNA Privacy Rights, EFF Tells Court
By Karen Gullo,
Electronic Frontier Foundation [cites CGS and Pete Shanks]
| 03. 29. 2019
Analyzing and indefinitely keeping the DNA profiles of thousands of Californians arrested for felonies, but never charged with a crime, is not just an ominously overbroad practice by law enforcement—it’s an invasion of privacy that violates the state’s constitution. Last year EFF and our co-counsel Michael Risher filed a lawsuit against California challenging its DNA retention and search practices on behalf of the Center for Genetics and Society, the Equal Justice Society, and an individual plaintiff, writer and editor Pete Shanks.
Attorneys for the state responded to the case by telling a judge there’s no basis for it, no law is being broken, and it should be dismissed. This is simply wrong. We asked the judge this week to reject the state’s callous indifference to the privacy rights of Californians and its attempt to sweep its conduct under the rug.
DNA can reveal a vast array of highly private information, including family relationships, ethnicity, physical characteristics, illnesses, and genetic traits. People have a right to expect that this information will remain private and out of the hands...
Related Articles
By Jonathan D. Grinstein, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 06.26.2024
Partial screenshot from The Bridge Recombination Mechanism
video by The Arc Institute on YouTube (CC)
Buried in a family of mobile genetic elements, Arc Institute researchers led by Patrick Hsu, PhD, have discovered an RNA-guided system that enables modular...
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 05.31.2024
Last year, Jaume Pellicer led a team of fellow scientists into a forest on Grande Terre, an island east of Australia. They were in search of a fern called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. Standing just a few inches tall, it was not...
By Liz Szabo, The New York Times | 05.29.2024
By the time Rena Barrow-Wells gave birth to her fourth baby in 2020, she was well-versed in caring for a child with cystic fibrosis. She was also experienced in fighting for a diagnosis of the disease, which runs in families...
By Alison Snyder, Axios | 06.06.2024
Gene editing's next chapter will be focused on tackling cancers and more common diseases, uncovering new details about aging and other fundamental aspects of biology and editing RNA, top scientists in the field said this week.
The big picture: ...