BBC News reports that "Privacy campaigners have walked out of talks aimed at creating a code of conduct for companies keen to use facial-recognition technology. In an open letter, the groups said they had quit because of "fundamental" differences over use of the technology. And there had been little prospect that the talks would have produced "adequate protections" for citizens. People deserved better protection than the talks had been likely to have produced, they said. The discussions, brokered by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the body that oversees technology policy issues, began in February 2014. Nine separate privacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, were invited. But the groups' letter said the companies involved had refused to accept they needed prior permission from people being identified by the technology."
Wednesday 17 June 2015
Friday 5 June 2015
Cloud DNA
Times of India reports that Amazon is in a race against Google to store data on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018.
Academic institutions and healthcare companies are picking sides between their cloud computing offerings - Google Genomics or Amazon Web Services - spurring the two to one-up each other as they win high-profile genomics business, according to interviews with researchers, industry consultants and analysts.
That growth is being propelled by, among other forces, the push for personalized medicine, which aims to base treatments on a patient's DNA profile. Making that a reality will require enormous quantities of data to reveal how particular genetic profiles respond to different treatments.
Already, universities and drug manufacturers are embarking on projects to sequence the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people. The human genome is the full complement of DNA, or genetic material, a copy of which is found in nearly every cell of the body.
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