DNA privacy vs the police - local DNA databases

The case of the Golden State Killer and the use of a public genealogy web site to perform familial DNA searches is both big news and not likely to be a one-off.

But under the radar is something probably a lot more sinister that has been going on in a number of places for several years.

Local police in many places are maintaining their own private DNA databases, and there are no regulations.

Some police departments collect samples from people who are never arrested or convicted of crimes, though in all such cases the person is supposed to voluntarily comply and not be coerced or threatened. State and federal authorities typically require a conviction, arrest or warrant before a sample is entered into their collections.

“The local databases have very, very little regulations and very few limits, and the law just hasn’t caught up to them,” said Jason Kreig, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has studied the issue. “Everything with the local DNA databases is skirting the spirit of the regulations.”

This story quotes a police chief from a small Connecticut town:

“It’s not like we’re pulling over motorists and asking them for DNA,” Halloran said. “There has to be some sort of correlation to a crime.”

but…

Many of the reference swabs are so-called “elimination” or “victim” samples, swabs taken from crime victims to eliminate them from the DNA mix during analysis. Others are from so-called “field interviews” — people who volunteer them during traffic stops, street stops and other consensual encounters with police.

The Golden State Killer case with it’s apparent link to using a relative’s DNA to hunt down the killer was the alarming point to me. Now you not only have to worry about your own DNA, but your relatives as well.

That’s almost enough for me to throw my hands up in the air and say the genie is out of the bottle now, no stuffing it back in.

I haven’t knowingly submitted my DNA anywhere, but if it’s ever used without my knowledge I hope it catches a killer.

But the thing is, sure, you control your own DNA, but your distant, distant, distant cousin thrice-removed controls their DNA. And if they want to upload their DNA to the cloud, it’s perfectly within their rights.

Right, that’s my point. When they can track you down through the most tangential of links then trying to protect your own DNA is just going to be next to impossible.

It certainly has some benefits to law enforcement, but why not just have a universal DNA database and force registration? Because there are drawbacks. The issue here is that this gets us dangerously close to a universal DB without having to actually have such. I don’t see a solution without some seriously heavy duty laws to limit police work, which I don’t see happening.

So with all that in mind, trying to worry about DNA privacy for criminal matters looks to be close to a lost cause already.

Next up is corporate and other civilian issues.

I’m far more worried about corporate and other civilian use. Looking at my genetic code to determine what diseases I’m predisposed to, then denying me health care (or making it so expensive I can’t afford it) is high on my list of things to fight.

DNA for solving crimes? I’m actually a pretty big fan…as long as they are doing a good job with the analysis. DNA has exonerated a large number of people, see the innocence project

While I’m not involved in any sort of law enforcement, I am a bioinformatics guy. When the 1000 genomes project (goal: sequence the first 1000 human genomes to build a map of common mutations in the human genome) was well underway, I was the one who looked at the cast of 1000’s of individuals that were potential subjects, and build up networks of relationships using only their genetic information. Person X is the aunt of person Y, who’s a first cousin of person Z, who’s the father of person A. I’m currently working on something like DNA fingerprinting, but it works with mixtures of people. You could imagine getting some blood that had 10 different people’s DNA, and I could identify who’s in there and what proportion. This stuff is all being used to further basic research - particularly to better understand how the human brain works at the molecular level.

Not if you kill off all your family preemptively!

Related