From the article:
“Regardless of the motivation, any breach involving genetic data has potentially wide-ranging consequences. “There is no way of knowing who has access to it now, how many people have access to it, or what they may choose to do with it in the future,” Callow says. “Genetic data does imply health outcomes in a lot of cases, and that is something that may affect a person’s long-term employability or perhaps the likelihood of dying early or suffering a debilitating illness. Potentially, this data could be of interest to employers or insurers.”
“In an age where an increasing number of financial decisions are made by algorithms that scrape all possible sources of information about an individual, there is a serious possibility of financial loss and discrimination arising from a leak of genetic data. Health insurance companies in the US are barred from using genetic information to calculate risk, but there is no federal law to prohibit its use by life insurance companies. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where leaked genetic data might lead to higher premiums or customers being denied cover entirely because of their genes, or being rejected for a long-term bank loan or mortgage because leaked data suggests a higher likelihood of the lender developing Alzheimer’s and passing away before it could be was repaid in full.”
Thanks
“ There is no way of knowing …what they may choose to do with it in the future,”
Yes. That’s exactly my point or question.
The one thing I can think of is identification.
But the article doesn’t say if the person’s name was associated with the DNA data.
But if so, a person could be identified. Relatives could be too.
No incognito traveling or aliases.
I can see how a totalitarian state would want this ability. Probably why Chicoms or Russia stole it.