Intelligence Committee Member Warns of Possible Threat Targeting Americans’ DNA

A Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee has warned Americans not to use DNA testing services, because the data could be collected to create bioweapons targeting individuals or groups.

“You can’t have a discussion about this without talking about privacy and the protection of commercial data, because expectations of privacy have degraded over the last 20 years,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on July 22.

“Young folks actually have very little expectation of privacy; that’s what the polling and the data show.”

“People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background,” he said, referencing the popular DNA testing and ancestry service.

But governments can “actually take someone’s DNA … you know, their medical profile, and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable,” Crow added, saying that companies such as 23andMe can sell a person’s DNA.

“And guess what? Their DNA is now owned by a private company,” he said. “It can be sold off with very little intellectual property protection or privacy protection, and we don’t have legal and regulatory regimes to deal with that.”

Officials need to have a “public discussion” about the protection of DNA information, health care information, and related data, as such data can “be procured and collected by our adversaries for the development of these systems,” Crow said, referring to biological weapons.

The company 23andMe previously denied selling the private information, including DNA data, of its customers. Representatives of 23andMe didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

China, Russia Collecting Americans’ DNA

About a year ago, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned that Chinese and Russian laboratories were processing the

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