Both GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA’s Terms of Service outline their policies for law enforcement use. But for many users, crime-solving is not the primary motivation for signing up for these sites. Additionally, not everyone reads the terms of service, and companies can change their terms at any time, or even break their own.
That’s why David Gurney, who helped draft the DNA Justice Foundation’s Terms of Service, wanted to make sure users fully understood what they were signing up for. This site is not a consumer genealogy tool and users cannot access their matches. The database can only be used by law enforcement to investigate certain crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sexual assault, kidnapping, robbery, aggravated assault, terrorism, and imminent threats to public safety. . (These are similar to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA terms.)
“I don’t think anyone who agrees to these terms and conditions can’t understand what they’re trying to do,” said assistant professor of law and society at New Jersey’s Ramapo University and director of the Center for Investigative Genetic Genealogy. says Gurney, who is
But even for non-commercial databases, there are still risks involved in uploading DNA data to these databases. Just because you share some of his DNA with a suspect, you or your family members could be involved in a criminal investigation. Genealogists work with investigators to narrow down suspects based on factors such as the suspect’s estimated age and place of residence at the time of the crime, but the clues they produce are just clues. Also, sometimes the leads are wrong. Police had identified another member of his family before arresting DeAngelo. he was innocent
And then there are security concerns. In 2020, GEDmatch reported: hackers launched a clever attack in that database. The site’s privacy settings were overridden by this compromise. This means that profiles of users who did not opt-in for matching with law enforcement were temporarily made available for that purpose.
Jennifer Lynch, head of surveillance litigation at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group, doesn’t believe that nonprofit DNA databases are a panacea for these problems. “It doesn’t settle the fact that these searches are unconstitutional,” she says. The EFF and others have argued that genetic genealogy research by law enforcement violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens of the United States from unjust searches and seizures.group too oppose secret collection of DNA without a warrant.
“When law enforcement searches these databases, they don’t have individual suspects in mind,” Lynch says.she does it “Fishing Expedition” It is most often used as a last resort when investigators fail to produce good leads. “Even if technology may solve crime, that doesn’t mean we should look at our constitutional rights differently,” says Lynch.
She also worries about slippery slopes. These databases currently limit police use to investigating violent crimes. But nothing will stop us from eroding people’s privacy by changing terms of service to allow law enforcement to investigate increasingly low-severity crimes.
If courts do not address the constitutionality of the technique, it will be important to enforce laws restricting its use, Lynch says. Several US states have already adopted regulations limiting the types of crimes these databases can be used for or requiring police to obtain search warrants to use them.
For now, Moore and Press focus on the public interest of genetic genealogy. “If people support the idea of getting violent criminals off the streets, naming unidentified people and providing answers to families, they should seriously consider supporting us positively.” Moore says. “They could be the answer to cases being solved or violent criminals being put in prison.”
