Caroline Petrow-Cohen reports:
Dozens of states have filed a joint lawsuit against the bankrupt DNA-testing company 23andMe to block the company’s sale of its customers’ genetic data without explicit consent.
The suit, filed this week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, comes months after 23andMe began a court-supervised sale process of its assets.
The South San Francisco-based venture was once valued at $6 billion and has collected DNA samples from more than 15 million customers.
The company’s bankruptcy has raised questions over privacy standards for genetic data, which experts say is uniquely sensitive, immutable and irreplaceable if stolen. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia filed the lawsuit, arguing that 23andMe customers have an inherent right to their own genetic information.
Read more at the L.A. Times.
h/t, FourthAmendment.com