The government can take your private data

Did you ever spit into a plastic tube and mail it in to learn if you really have Sicilian blood, or Moroccan ancestors? Ancestry investigations for fun, right? Fun, except when the information from that DNA is shared without your knowledge.

Ancestry.com, one of the largest repositories of personal DNA data, publishes transparency reports periodically, outlining their response to governmental requests for an individual’s data. In a recent report, the company admits that they will supply your DNA to the government with “a court order or search warrant.”

23andMe, another popular DNA ancestry site, is even more vague in the privacy statement on their website. They won’t release individual data unless “required to do so by court order, subpoena, search warrant or other requests that we determine are legally valid.”

These are disturbing statements. A search warrant is difficult to obtain without evidence of criminal activity. But what a “court order” or “other requests” the company determines to be “legally valid” means is open to broad interpretation.

When you sent your sample, did you sign anything allowing your personal DNA to be saved and shared? Did you give permission for it to be given to a government agency when a court order requests it? I am guessing the answer is no.

So your genealogical search data may be shared. What about your DNA collected when you were the victim of a crime?

In February it was revealed that a woman in San Francisco was arrested when the police used DNA evidence from an evidence kit taken as part of the investigation of her rape six years earlier to tie her to a 2021 burglary. Unbelievably, the police save DNA of crime victims in the event these victims might someday be criminals.

Undoubtedly, no one informed this woman that her DNA would be saved for years in a government database in the event that she should happen to be involved in a crime. Fortunately, the district attorney dismissed the charge, but now we are faced with some serious questions about the collection of DNA data and the violation of personal rights.

In addition to violating the rights of crime victims, the specter of a DNA database creates a real risk of preventing victims from coming forward in the first place. The San Francisco Police Department is “reviewing their policies,” but has also refused to say if crime victims DNA has been used in other investigations.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is exploring a federal ban on using crime victim DNA against them. Yet Mr. Schiff is the same guy who persuaded President Barack Obama to sign a law allowing massive collection of criminal’s DNA. Now, law enforcement can store DNA data from a convicted criminal, to be used in investigating future crimes.

But what about the millions of us who have (thankfully) not been a crime victim requiring the collection of DNA evidence? What if we are not criminals, but had just paid a company to tell us about our great-great-great grandmother’s hometown?

In that event, too bad. The protection of personal DNA data, no matter how innocently provided, can be turned over to authorities without your knowledge.

There appears to be little appetite to curb law enforcement’s enthusiasm for your personal data.

Congress needs to act to protect personal DNA information. Advocates in both the House and the Senate should raise awareness of this misuse of private data. As DNA collection becomes increasingly sophisticated, the dangers of infringement on our rights grow as well.

In the meantime, think twice about volunteering a bit of your body for entertainment. The eventual misuse of this data might not be so amusing after all.