Worries about a Genomic PRISM + a Collection of Privacy Related Material (Previously Posted)

The recent news focus on Edward Snowden and the NSA's PRISM program has shed a bright spotlight on privacy and how it relates to large-scale data mining. One interesting angle related to this is connecting privacy worries related to PRISM with the new government initiatives to create a huge database of genomic information. I'm quite interested in this and genomic privacy in general. Below I've collected some relevant links and related previous posts.

More practically, the issue of genomic privacy is crucial for a small lab working in bioinformatics. Basically, because of privacy concerns, the ecosystem of medical and genomic data is going to change considerably in the future -- becoming both larger but also more locked-down -- and consequently, it'll have to rely more on robust intra-institutional collaborations than large public databases .

* Recent USA Today op-ed by Dov Greenbaum & myself on this topic

http://info.gersteinlab.org/USA_Today_Oped_from_Other_Papers_for_M_Gerstein

* Selection of  my previous opeds & letters to the editor on genomic privacy 

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Personal-genomics-requires-redefining-privacy-3187668.php

http://info.gersteinlab.org/Hartford_Courant_OpEd2_from_Other_Papers_for_M_Gerstein

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602362.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/opinion/l12internet.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/sharing-too-much-online.html

Even more at:

http://papers.gersteinlab.org/subject/privacy

* Some academic papers I have written about privacy

http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/genomicsandprivacy 

http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/ajobcloud

http://papers.gersteinlab.org/papers/rseqtools 

* NCI Workshop on Genomic Privacy

http://epi.grants.cancer.gov/workshops/identifiability/think-tank-summary.pdf

* Recent piece in the NY Times related to genomic privacy 

"Poking Holes in Genetic Privacy,"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/science/poking-holes-in-the-privacy-of-dna.html

* Amusing Atlantic article on hacking the president's genome

I thought this was a good counterpoint to PRISM

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/hacking-the-presidents-dna/309147

Here's my unpublished letter in response to this:

http://blog.gerstein.info/2013/02/letter-re-hacking-presidents-dna.html