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December 12, 2019 01:50 am

Genetic Database That Identified Golden State Killer Acquired By Crime Scene DNA Company

"The crime scene DNA sequencing company Verogen announced yesterday that they've acquired the genomics database and website GEDmatch," reports The Verge. "GEDmatch was primarily used by genealogists until 2018, when police, the FBI, and a forensic genealogist identified the suspected Golden State Killer by tying crime scene DNA to relatives who had uploaded their genetic information to the site. Since then, the platform has helped identify around 70 people accused of violent crimes." From the report: The acquisition makes the relationship between the company and law enforcement explicit, but raises uncomfortable questions for users and experts about data privacy and the future direction of the platform. In response to privacy concerns, the company changed its terms and conditions last spring to only allow law enforcement access to data if users actively opted in. But until now, interaction with law enforcement was still a secondary function to the platform. The announcement took many in the genetics and genealogy community by surprise, and many genealogists are leaving the platform. "There have simply been too many changes, all of them in the direction of making their data the product rather than the website a service," said lawyer and genealogist Judy Russell in an email to The Verge. GEDmatch users were prompted to accept new terms and conditions indicating the platform's new ownership, and could either agree and enter the site, or remove their data from the platform. Verogen will still allow users to keep their data from any use by law enforcement, CEO Brett Williams told BuzzFeed News, maintaining the opt-in approach. "It will be interesting to see in the future if the new owners will implement policy changes that will increase the number of individuals available for law enforcement searching," says James Hazel, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings at Vanderbilt University. The report notes, however, that "opt-in is not a foolproof system for data protection." Last month, a Florida detective announced at a police convention that he had obtained a warrant to penetrate GEDmatch and search its full database of nearly one million users.

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