> I don't recall ever having a single supporter in my claim that a person's genome is private medical data. Huh. In Canada, that's a settled question. It is,

> I don't recall ever having a single supporter in my claim that a person's genome is private medical data. Huh. In Canada, that's a settled question. It is, at least with regard to e.g. a medical record that contains genetic information. We're also looking at laws which prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information. Though more directly to what you're talking about, I think it is in fact legal for a private citizen to collect discarded biological material from a person and sequence it. A company would be prohibited, however. I am not a lawyer, though. > The reasonable expectation of privacy simply does not apply to things one has thrown away. That can be fixed by statute. While the law is similar here in that items discarded are no longer protected by the constitution regarding search and seizure, statute prohibits a company, for example, from collecting banking information from discarded paperwork in the recycling.