Skip to main content

Law enforcement and DNA sequencing


DNA sequencing has risen in popularity in recent years to to the widespread availability of affordable testing kits. Obviously people are opting into participation by uploading their DNA data, in great numbers, but do they fully know how that data will be used?

The Golden State Killer, who terrorized California from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, was recently apprehended by working with a lesser known testing company, Family Tree DNA. Their kits are smaller and so is their database, but their database has an big advantage. The company boasts that it has the largest database Y-DNA database in the world. Y-DNA is very useful in tracing patrilineal ancestry, which is essentially data on who you are related to. This data is how the Golden State Killer was caught. Because some of his relatives had willingly participated in DNA kit testing, law enforcement was able to triangulate his identity.

Use of these databases by law enforcement is a new but already rapidly growing phenomenon. Gene by Gene, the parent company of Family Tree DNA, has stressed that they are able to cooperate with law enforcement without violating users privacy, and that users also have the option to opt out of any non-geneatological uses of their DNA. However, this really undermines the usefulness of testing for consumers, as many people are seeking to locate lost relatives rather than data simply on themselves. We are also told that law enforcement must provide a valid warrant before any cooperation will occur.

While you may be asking yourself some good questions about the Golden State Killer, such as why did he apparently stop committing crimes? Or how did he evade police detection for so long? There are also questions we need to be asking about our DNA data. Other cold-cases have since been cracked by cooperation between law enforcement, private DNA databases, and consumer data. The lure of cracking a decades old violent crime is surely a boon to society, but are we voluntarily eroding what little privacy we have left?

At present, DNA testing is entirely voluntary. However, those convicted of felony crimes are already required to submit their DNA into a federal database. Consumers have the ability to have their DNA data deleted, for now, but convicted felons do not. There is already a very vast amount of data being collected on anyone who owns a smartphone, do we really want to add DNA as well? Are we falsely assuming that we will always have the ability to opt out unless we're criminals? I would hold off on submitting any DNA data voluntarily until there is more transparency and there are more protections in place, because at present I see little preventing abuse. What is preventing, for example, law enforcement from unknowingly collecting data on a different suspect while collecting data on a primary suspect for which they do have a warrant?

--Jay E. blogging for digitalinfinity.org
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Evolution Of Tech Culture

Photo by Skitterphoto The culture associated with technology has a checkered past but maybe not in the way you think. Before it became socially acceptable to tote your pocket supercomputer around, why was technology culture anti-social? Are we more social now, or less? Ars Technica recently interviewed Clive Thompson for his upcoming book  Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World .Thompson specifically focuses on the origins of the culture of programmers, and there are some interesting divergences from the culture as it is today. Traditionally, software programmers are stereotyped but Thompson debunks these myths. Rather than being purely anti-social, programmers are merely intensely focused problem solvers. Programmers will spend many hours trying to fix something, which can be frustrating, but they are a rare breed equipped to handle frustration. Programmers solve hard problems, despite frustration, because this is what they enjoy doing. There is a...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Algorithmic Life

Photo by sk Data is the most valuable commodity of the 21st century. Algorithms are what transform data into information. Algorithms have become like a trusted friend whose recommendations we seek, and that we adhere to. Perhaps what isn't known is how these pieces of code are able to derive such useful information for us, which is the part of algorithms that are unseen to many. An algorithm is ultimately only as good as the data that is fed into it, and we are all feeding vast amounts of data into code we did not author, that we don't control, and that is only visible to us in its outputs. The convenience provided by algorithms is certainly welcome, but according to a recent Pew Research Center report , the public doesn't have such a welcoming opinion of them when used for decisions that can be life-changing. Algorithms represent far more than recommendations on which media to consume. There is an innate desire for humanity in decisions that could dictate, for examp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Workplace Privacy

Photo by Philipp Birmes Americans who believe that our rights are unalienable would be surprised to learn how limited in scope they are at their place of employment. At work, our liberties are second to the need for business to monitor their assets, including their greatest asset, their people. While it is not unreasonable for businesses to be secure, they must tread carefully to avoid violating the rights of their employees. The story of Theranos, the now defunct blood testing company which has since been revealed to be a total fraud, is not new, but many new details are now emerging. Theranos was a silicon valley wunderkind because it was poised to revolutionize the blood testing industry under the leadership of its charismatic leader, Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes made many unethical business decisions, but how was this massive fraud initially discovered? One detail about Theranos that has recently emerged is how paranoid senior leadership was. Holmes had made a connection to a f...
Post a Comment
Read more