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Are there any good discussions on the ethics of using public genealogy databases to catch criminals? The idea of using a 23andMe or Ancestry.com database to test against DNA left at a crime scene went mainstream a few years ago when police used a public database to find and track the Golden State Killer. Now, police from Moscow, Idaho have done it again in tracking Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/idaho-murder-suspect-arrest-genealogy-b2254498.html
I am a bit conflicted on how I feel about this. On the one hand, obviously the police should do everything in their power to catch murderers. But there is a certain amount of dystopian doom in being able to access such a database. The problem is you don't even need to have your DNA uploaded to the database for the cops to find you. A fourth or fifth cousin's DNA gives the police enough information to create a family tree and zero in on a particular suspect.
I have a couple problems with this, the first of which is that it doesn't seem like it should be legal that the government essentially can track me by my DNA without any sort of consent. The second problem I have is that DNA evidence is not nearly as reliable as people seem to think. Hair and touch DNA are constantly contaminating crime scenes. Hairs can be picked up anywhere, from the police who investigate the scene, to techs, to medical examiners, to the bodies of the victims themselves. Granted this is not as applicable if the suspect's blood is at the scene, but nevertheless, DNA evidence is not foolproof, yet juries seem to convict as if it is.
I tend to lean a bit more anti-authoritarian, so perhaps this is my own personal bias, but it seems we need to regulate this type of DNA testing.
I think that it might be helpful to consider how we would respond to the development of a different high-tech tool: A time machine. Suppose several people commit a crime, and one is arrested. The police don't know who is accomplices were. So, they jump in their time machine and go get a warrant to tap the arrestee's phone in the days before the event, so they can see who his accomplices are. Then, they go back to the present and arrest the accomplices. That does not seem to be problematic, from a privacy point of view.
Yet, if police effectively go back in the past by getting a warrant to read the accomplice's past texts, people get very upset. Why? They seem to me to be functionally identical.
It seems to me that people are conflating collecting data with *looking at *data. Collecting data about me -- whether that be my texts or my DNA or whatever -- does not harm me. The harm only comes if someone examines that data to learn something private about me, such as my risk for cancer, or what have you (similarly, the government collects my garbage every week. But it they start searching my garbage to find out details about my private life, I have a problem with that, the Supreme Court notwithstanding.
So, do I have a problem with the govt creating a DNA database? Not really. Do I have a problem if the govt examines my DNA to discover private facts about me? Yes. But using 23andMe to find suspects is not the govt trying to find private facts about me; it is about the govt trying to find out who left a particular piece of evidence at the scene. Years ago, when a friend got married, he gave the best man and groomsmen custom baseball bats with the wedding date, etc, on them. If one was used to murder a victim, and the police asked my friend for a list of all of the groomsmen, would that be an outrage? It would not. How is it different if the perpetrator leaves DNA, rather than a distinctive baseball bat, at the scene? It isn't. As long as the police 1) get a warrant; and 2) do not use the DNA to snoop into whatever intimate info that DNA might reveal about the people involved, there is no problem.
I think this is actually a big part of the issue. Private companies can be sent DNA from your relatives, and may turn that information over to LE without a warrant. Moreover, if there is no real obstacle to getting this information, then what is to stop the government from just snooping by requesting large chunks of data and combing through it looking for anything they can find?
Well, what do you mean by snooping looking for anything they can find? Running a DNA sample left at a crime scene through a database looking for hits seems no different than running fingerprints through a fingerprint database. Why is that problematic?
Depends on the agency (why would it need to be limited to law enforcement?) and what they're doing with it. AFAIK only law enforcement has access to fingerprint databases, and the government can't get your fingerprints from your relatives; they can only get information on you if you volunteer it or are arrested. Also, a fingerprint on its own contains no useful information. You have to compare it to a fingerprint found somewhere, which is different from DNA.
As one example, could a health or scientific agency access your relatives' DNA for "research purposes" but then accidentally release information indicating you likely have some genetic disease? The IRS already did something like that. If the government wants to try to discredit someone, could they look specifically for evidence of, I don't know, that person having a child with someone who isn't their spouse?
There are other much more speculative uses, but in the immediate future, this are the sorts of things that are definitely possible.
Yes, but all tools can be misused. Police can use binoculars to watch women get undressed, and can use cars to run people over. They can accidentally release your financial information if they get it during an investigation. Etc, etc. So, merely saying that it is possible to misuse DNA
Right, but what benefit is there to allowing the government to access this information (at any time, for any purpose) just by asking a company? I get the utility in investigating crime, but that can still require a warrant, and can be limited to that specific purpose, like how you have to give the IRS financial information but not the CDC.
Who said anything about "for any purpose"? I thought your entire argument was that it could be acquired for a proper purpose, but misused for an improper one. The examples you gave were all of that sort. That is why I asked initially, "what do you mean by snooping"?
Maybe what I thought was the point has gotten lost. I think that police should be required to get a warrant to get DNA data from a company, even if the company would be willing to let them compare evidence gathered from a crime scene without one. This also means that access to such data would be restricted to law enforcement and that it can only be used to identify a suspect in a specific crime, each investigation requiring its own warrant. Currently, this is not the case.
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