“DNA dragnets” spark concern about privacy
WASHINGTON» It’s a forensics technique that has helped crack several cold cases.
Across the country, investigators are analyzing DNA and using basic genealogy to find relatives of potential suspects in the hope that these “familial searches” will lead them to the killer.
Familial searches led California authorities to arrest Joseph James DeAngelo in the Golden State Killer probe in April, and investigators have since used it to make breakthroughs in several other unsolved murder cases, including four in Washington state, Pennsylvania, Texas and North Carolina.
But as these searches proliferate, they are raising concerns about police engagement in “DNA dragnets” and “genetic stop and frisk” techniques. And as public DNA databases grow and are accessed by law enforcement, investigators may soon have the ability to track down nearly anyone, even people who never submitted their genetic material for analysis.
“If you are a privacy zealot, this is super alarming. It means you don’t have any privacy,” said Malia Fullerton, a bioethics specialist and professor at the University of Washington. “On the other hand, if you have no problem with police using your family information to solve these cold cases, you might see this as a good thing.”
Part of the concern stems from law enforcement’s rapid embrace of familial searches to investigate crimes, aided by open-access DNA databases that did not exist a decade ago.
One of these is Florida-based GEDmatch, founded in 2010. GEDmatch allows genealogy enthusiasts to upload and share their DNA profiles, created from commercial services such as Ancestry and 23andMe. The site offers special tools to help find people find relatives, and since it is free of charge, it has rapidly grown — to more than 920,000 profiles by May.
It’s also proved to be a gold mine for law enforcement.
In California’s Golden State Killer probe, investigator Paul Holes turned to GEDMatch after trying to find a match for DNA the killer left at a Ventura County crime scene. Holes initially looked through the
FBI’s DNA database, which includes genetic profiles of people arrested or convicted of crimes, but he came up empty.
To broaden his search, Holes registered with GEDmatch using an alias, uploaded the unknown suspect’s DNA profile. Several distant relatives of the suspect came up. Investigators then spent months building family trees and tracking down relatives using basic genealogical research, to narrow their list of possible suspects.
Ultimately they arrested DeAngelo, a former police officer living near Sacramento, Calif.
But the methods police employed in their search are coming under scrutiny.
Before identifying DeAngelo, investigators reportedly assembled and examined 25 different family trees, possibly involving up to 1,000 people.
“These details, many of which only came to light after intense press coverage, raise a host of concerns about the methods employed (by police) and the degree to which they exposed otherwise innocent individuals to harms associated with unjustified privacy intrusions,” Fullerton and collaborator Rori Rohlfs wrote in an online magazine Leapsmag.