Governments can pass laws to protect genetic privacy. Certainly in the short term those laws will have considerable effect. But in the long run will the enforcement of genetic privacy laws turn out to be an exercise in futility? The answer to that question hinges more on the cost, availability, and the nature of future DNA sequencing devices than it does on laws that governments may enact. So lets examine some likely stages in the advance of DNA sequencing technology and how each stage will most likely impact the ability to protect genetic privacy.

If DNA sequencing machines are expensive and yet can process high volumes of samples then the cost per sample can still be low. Under that scenario the machines will be owned by a smaller number labs that can justify the expense of owning one because they will handle high volumes. This is a scenario under which government could try to come up with regulations to make it unlikely that someone other than the person getting tested would be the person who submits a sample. Under these circumstances regulations would probably manage to make the vast majority of all DNA samples legitimately submitted.

Of course there'd be ways of cheating. If someone has a buddy who works in a lab and who is willing to make some under-the-table money that person might be able to get a sample run thru. Though it might be possible to detect that sort of abuse to the sequencing machine since the machine would be tied into a secure computer that would track every DNA sequence result that gets generated and there'd be an audit trail where someone might detect that more sample runs were done than were requested by specific known customers.

Another way to cheat would be to send a sample to a country that has lax genetic privacy laws (the laws might even exist but just not be enforced well) and have the sample run on a sequencing machine in that country. This requires some travel or shipment of the sample. But the sample would be easy to hide owing to its small size. There could also be secret labs hidden in the countries that have strict genetic privacy laws.

Marsha Goodbar is seriously looking for Mr. Right. She's had some bad experiences with previous relationships. There's a personality type in guys she's been attracted to in the past where they turn out to be far more narcissistic than they initially seem. In the year 2010 that personality type was identified as far more common in men who have a particular combination of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and Simple Tandem Repeat (STRs) sequence patterns. Marsha's girlfriend Julie Bond has a brother James who works as a diplomatic attache in a country that has rather lax genetic privacy laws. Julie goes to visit him periodically. On a previous trip down to see James Julie brought along some personal effects left in her bathroom by Derrick, the last guy Julie was disastrously involved with. James was able to get some good skin samples off Derrick's hairbrush, had them sequenced in a local lab. He was able to show Julie that Derrick had the genetic variations typical of self-absorbed manipulative narcissists. Julie told Marsha about this and offered to take samples from Marsha's romantic prospects to get sequenced if Marsha could get DNA samples from the guys she was currently dating. Marsha had just read a July 2011 Cosmo article about genetically based male personality types to avoid and so she decided to accept Julie's offer. Each time she went for dinner or drinks with a guy Marsha managed to slip the guy's empty drinking glass into a plastic pouch in her purse when he wasn't looking. She also gave each guy a real sucking french kiss at the end of their dates and immediately turned around, went inside alone, and soon as the door shut she rushed into the bathroom to spit into sealable plastic bags and then placed each bag in the freezer. This gave Marsha a couple of decent sources of cells from each guy for Julie to take on her next visit to see James. Marsha's own DNA would also show up in the spit but Julie said that with separate samples from Marsha the machine can figure out which DNA is hers and just tell her the additional sequences.

Johnny Law has a hunch that Ralph Ruffian may be the serial killer he is searching for. Its just a hunch. He sees a way to test that hunch. The same DNA pattern has been found at a few murder scenes. Johnny hasn't been able to get enough evidence to get a court order to compel Ruffian to submit to DNA testing. Johnny thinks he should try to confirm his hunch using a surreptitiously acquired DNA sample - even if the result can't be used as evidence in court he or even allow him to tell fellow law officers. It still seems worth it though. He needs to confirm that he really should focus all his efforts on Ruffian. After all, the murderer will probably murder again and Johnny's own rule-breaking seems justifiable to him if it helps him prevent additional murders. Well, down in the Metropolis DNA Testing Lab Cathy Compliant has a big crush on Johnny and Johnny knows it. So Johnny decides that to save the lives of potential future victims of the serial killer he's going to secretly get a sample of Ruffian's DNA by scraping the dirt and skin off of Ruffian's motorcycle handgrips while Ruffian is in his favorite biker bar. Plus, he's going to take scrapings and hair samples from inside Ruffian's helmet. He's also going to scrape the surface of Ruffian's front door knob when Ruffian is not at home. He's hoping that between all these samples some will be good enough for DNA sequencing. Then when Cathy's alone on the night shift he'll ask her to run the sample with no questions asked and without logging the results. Cathy's an ace with the computer and knows how to jigger the DNA analyser database to delete the log entry for a test run.

Lets play a mental exercise: Imagine there is a gadget available for purchase for, say, $3000 that can sequence entire human genomes and fairly quickly. Suppose you could use it to get insight into people you deal with in business or in your personal life. Would you be curious enough to spend the $3000 to get a gadget that would let you find out the genetic personality profile or genetic influences on the health risks of others? Would it be more worth your while if you were dating? Or involved in negotiations in high stakes business deals?

If enough people some day start answering yes to those questions then wide availability of cheap small sequencing machines will basically make it impossible to protect genetic privacy for most people. People who are strongly inclined to respect all laws wouldn't cheat. But if the sequencing machines become small and cheap it will be easy for an individual to get a skin sample or other tissue sample of someone else and then sequence it without anyone else having any reason to suspect that it was done.

Its not just the cost of an individual DNA sequence analysis that matters. If a large mass production DNA sequencing machine could do a complete human DNA sequencing for less than $1 but some small portable DNA sequencer could do a sequencing for an average cost of $20 per sample it would be the latter machine that would constitute the bigger threat to human genetic privacy. Why? Its easier for a single person to act without needing to find one of the fairly small number of people who will have operational access to an expensive machine and convince one of those people cooperate (especially since failed attempts to secure cooperation would be legally risky).

A fairly low cost, easily concealable, and easy-to-use DNA sequencing device would be nearly impossible to regulate. It could be smuggled across borders and hid easily in homes. The ability to sequence someone else's DNA would not require that you cooperate with someone who works in a DNA sequencing lab. Only the person who decides to sequence the DNA of another person would have to know that the sequencing was done. The biggest challenge would be to find a way to surreptitiously acquire the DNA sample. So the advent of miniature DNA sequencing devices will do the most to erode the ability to protect genetic privacy.

Let us suppose then that miniaturized gene sequencers will be available at some point in the future. The only action that a government could take to protect genetic privacy would be to ban their sale and make possession and use a crime. The result of course would be that sequencers would still be available on the black market - albeit at a higher price and with legal risks for anyone who has one and gets found out. Can governments prevent people from getting things that they really want? At best governments can considerably raise the cost of purchase and to make people hesitate for fear of being prosecuted for possession of contraband.

Will democratically elected governments even choose to ban DNA sequencers in the first place? The answer to that question depends in part on whether more people want to be able to sequence others or to protect their own genetic privacy. In the war between the sexes each side will want to be able to sequence the other side while protecting their own sequence information (though even there it is easy to imagine a brother wanting to sequence his sister's boyfriend - each side in the war between the sexes has allies on the other side after all). It is difficult to say at this point how the politics of this will work out in practice. Still, lets explore some scenarios of people who will choose to sequence others regardless of the legality of doing so.

Joe Normal has a stepsister who grew up suffering from anxiety problems. Joe's seen how hard this has made her life and he's determined that the mother of his children should have no genetic tendencies toward anxiety. Joe read in a 2016 survey article of genetic influences on personality that way back in 2002 some scientists at the National Institute for Mental Health confirmed that a short variant of gene SLC6A4 (which codes for a serotonin neurotransmitter transporter protein) is far more prevalent in people who are prone to anxiety. Joe's worried that his girlfriend Annie becomes anxious in situations that don't bother Joe at all. Now, maybe that's just because it's natural for a normal sane person to not like going 80 mph on a motorcycle while it's raining. But Joe wants to make sure. Joe decides that he should use the dandruff off of one of Annie's jackets to test her DNA to see which variant of SLC6A4 she has. Joe doesn't want his future kids to get the anxiety causing version of that gene. In Joe's country personal DNA sequencers are not legally available. But Annie has been pleading with Joe to take her on a winter vacation to a tropical country. Joe looks up information about the country that Annie wants to visit and finds it has loose DNA privacy laws and that personal DNA sequencers are legally sold in consumer electronics shops. Joe tells Annie that she talked him into the trip and he buys the airplane tickets. She's so excited.

Susie Single really wants to have children. But she's anxious about being abandoned after the first kid is born. She wants a guy who is unlikely to divorce her. Susie has read about androgen receptor genetic variations that contribute to the likelihood that men will not stick around to raise their kids. In Susie's country personal DNA sequencers are easy to buy on the black market if you know the right people. She's willing to pay triple what they go for in countries where the devices are legal. She's dating a few guys who are all sending signals that they are interested in her. Susie is good at cutting hair and starts offering her boyfriends free haircuts. Every time she uses fresh combs and clean scissors and puts plastic down to catch all the hair. After the hair cut is done she collects up all the hair and takes the scalp flakes and later puts it all into the sequencer. For the most attractive ones who turn down free haircuts she lets them sleep with her and gets samples that way. For guys at the office she scrapes the handles of their coffee cups (some guys being pigs they rarely wash the handles) and the surfaces of their desks.

It is likely we will first reach a stage where sequencing services are cheap but the sequencing devices are expensive. This will create some opportunities for illicit sequencing for a variety of purposes. But at a later stage DNA sequencing devices will likely become cheaper and eventually easy to operate by anyone. In this later stage the prospects of maintaining genetic privacy become highly doubtful.

Science fiction writer David Brin foresees technological advances causing the death of privacy. Genetic privacy appears to be as vulnerable as other forms of privacy to advances in technology. Therefore I conclude that genetic privacy will not be protectable in the long run.