An at-home DNA testing company is helping the FBI solve violent crimes

[The AchieVer]

An at-home DNA testing company is helping the FBI solve violent crimes

The move raises privacy concerns

 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

FamilyTreeDNA, a popular at-home DNA test, is working with the FBI to help the agency solve violent crimes, the company acknowledged in a statement released this week. The policy appears to go beyond the privacy rules generally laid out by other major DNA testing companies.

BuzzFeed News first reported on the FamilyTreeDNA policy. The company told the outlet it had cooperated with the agency in less than 10 cases.

In its statement, the company said the laboratory that performs DNA tests for FamilyTreeDNA, as well as others, has been accepting samples from the DNA to identify suspects and human remains. The laboratory is also owned by FamilyTreeDNA president Bennett Greenspan. 

 

The laboratory has been working with the FBI by generating “data profiles” from law enforcement evidence samples. Officials can then upload that sample to databases, including FamilyTreeDNA, and search for possible matches. 

The FBI doesn’t have free rein over the genetic database, the company said. “We came to the conclusion that if law enforcement created accounts, with the same level of access to the database as the standard FamilyTreeDNA user, they would not be violating user privacy and confidentiality,” Greenspan said in a statement. To obtain any information beyond that would require a legal order, the statement said. 

DNA testing has aided law enforcement in some high-profile cases, including by tracking down the suspected Golden State Killer through a publicly accessible genetic database. Generally, though, private DNA testing companies have pledged to resist working with law enforcement, and voluntarily aiding officials could raise concerns from privacy advocates.

“If we can help prevent violent crimes and save lives or bring closure to families, then we’re going to do that,” Greenspan said in the statement. “We’re going to do it within a framework that continues to ensure that the privacy of our customers, which has been paramount to us since day one and remains so today, is protected to the greatest degree possible.”

 

 

Source

[Matrix]

The FBI only needs 2% of the population's DNA to be able to effectively match anyone in the country

 

 

 

In brief: FamilyTreeDNA, one of the big players in the consumer genetic testing market, has granted the FBI access to its database of genetic profiles. This will more than double the amount of consumer genetic information the FBI has access to.

The company currently has DNA samples for nearly 2 million people and confirmed this late week that their data is now accessible by the FBI.

Through this agreement, the FBI will be able to submit crime-scene DNA samples to FamilyTreeDNA for analysis and to find potential matches in their database. The company has said that the FBI's access will be heavily monitored and that they will "not have unfettered access to the FamilyTreeDNA database," but privacy advocates are still concerned.

Since the vast majority of our DNA is shared and passed down through families, the FBI only needs about 2% of the population's DNA to create profiles for everyone. For example, you may not want your DNA made available, but if a family relative does, that effectively makes yours available, too.

This is not the first time the FBI has used consumer genetic data though. In the past, some databases have allowed the FBI a case-by-case access to help solve individual crimes. This was famously used last year to catch the Golden State Killer. FamilyTreeDNA's decision does however mark the first time a commercial company has voluntarily shared their data with law enforcement.

Last year, FamilyTreeDNA agreed to a suite of industry best practices for privacy in the consumer DNA industry. As a result, a prominent genetic industry privacy watchdog group just crossed them off that list of best practices.

FamilyTreeDNA views the degradation of privacy as worth it to help protect against false convictions. They released the following statement:

“The real risk is not exposure of info but that an innocent person could be swept up in a criminal investigation because his or her cousin has taken a DNA test. On the other hand, the more people in the databases and the closer the matches, the less chance there is that people will make mistakes.’’

 Original Article

[Karamjit]

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