Suspect by blood
“Familial” DNA may solve some crimes, but it raises privacy issues.
It’s said that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It’s a commentary on how our view of the world is a matter of perspective.
In a similar vein, you might say that in the eyes of New York’s criminal justice system, everyone is a possible criminal — or at least could be closely related to one.
That’s the troubling downside of the investigative technique of using “familial DNA.” And just as troubling is the failure of state lawmakers to step in on this issue, leaving it to the criminal justice system to regulate itself.
As applied to law enforcement, the term “familial DNA” refers to situations in which DNA collected in an investigation doesn’t precisely match a sample in the state’s DNA databank, but it’s close enough to possibly be a relative.
That makes it a potentially useful forensic tool in developing leads. But it also raises new issues in the debate over personal privacy. Now, people closely related to one of the more than 685,000 individuals in the state’s DNA databanks stand to become, if not full-fledged suspects, then at least persons of interest. Or whatever euphemism will be used to assuage public concern that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers could come under police suspicion even if they never did anything criminal in their lives.
We raised concerns about it in 2018, when it came to light that the state had quietly loosened the rules on DNA searches. Where previously the state would identify people only if a sample yielded an exact match, the Division of Criminal Justice Services, the Commission on Forensic Science, and the commission’s DNA subcommittee in 2017 authorized the use of familial searches as well. They did so even after the Legislature had declined to pass bills to allow it.
Familial DNA has helped solve some crimes around the country. But the degree to which technology is allowed to intrude on people’s lives — whether it’s surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition software or familial DNA — is a matter for our elected representatives to weigh. There is also concern that this will exacerbate the profiling of Black people by a criminal justice system in which they are already disproportionately arrested.
We’re not alone in these concerns. A state appeals court last week halted the use of familial DNA in a case brought by a group of Black men concerned about being targeted for investigations simply because their brothers had committed crimes and had genetic information in the databank. The court ruled that the regulations allowing familial DNA searches are invalid because they were implemented without the Legislature’s consent.
We want police to solve crimes. But a state that simply hands such sensitive decisions over to police should not be surprised to discover that it’s coming to feel uncomfortably like a police state. It’s the job of our elected representatives to find the balance between public safety and individual rights.