Police are Getting DNA Data from People who Think They Opted Out

Jordan Smith

The Intercept

Originally posted 18 Aug 23

Here is an excerpt:

The communications are a disturbing example of how genetic genealogists and their law enforcement partners, in their zeal to close criminal cases, skirt privacy rules put in place by DNA database companies to protect their customers. How common these practices are remains unknown, in part because police and prosecutors have fought to keep details of genetic investigations from being turned over to criminal defendants. As commercial DNA databases grow, and the use of forensic genetic genealogy as a crime-fighting tool expands, experts say the genetic privacy of millions of Americans is in jeopardy.

Moore did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

To Tiffany Roy, a DNA expert and lawyer, the fact that genetic genealogists have accessed private profiles — while simultaneously preaching about ethics — is troubling. “If we can’t trust these practitioners, we certainly cannot trust law enforcement,” she said. “These investigations have serious consequences; they involve people who have never been suspected of a crime.” At the very least, law enforcement actors should have a warrant to conduct a genetic genealogy search, she said. “Anything less is a serious violation of privacy.”

(cut)

Exploitation of the GEDmatch loophole isn’t the only example of genetic genealogists and their law enforcement partners playing fast and loose with the rules.

Law enforcement officers have used genetic genealogy to solve crimes that aren’t eligible for genetic investigation per company terms of service and Justice Department guidelines, which say the practice should be reserved for violent crimes like rape and murder only when all other “reasonable” avenues of investigation have failed. In May, CNN reported on a U.S. marshal who used genetic genealogy to solve a decades-old prison break in Nebraska. There is no prison break exception to the eligibility rules, Larkin noted in a post on her website. “This case should never have used forensic genetic genealogy in the first place.”

A month later, Larkin wrote about another violation, this time in a California case. The FBI and the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team had identified the victim of a 1996 homicide using the MyHeritage database — an explicit violation of the company’s terms of service, which make clear that using the database for law enforcement purposes is “strictly prohibited” absent a court order.

“The case presents an example of ‘noble cause bias,’” Larkin wrote, “in which the investigators seem to feel that their objective is so worthy that they can break the rules in place to protect others.”

The story is here.

My take:

Forensic genetic genealogists have been skirting GEDmatch privacy rules by searching users who explicitly opted out of sharing DNA with law enforcement. This means that police can access the DNA of people who thought they were protecting their privacy by opting out of law enforcement searches.

The practice of forensic genetic genealogy has been used to solve a number of cold cases, but it has also raised concerns about privacy and civil liberties. Some people worry that the police could use DNA data to target innocent people or to build a genetic database of the entire population.

GEDmatch has since changed its privacy policy to make it more difficult for police to access DNA data from users who have opted out. However, the damage may already be done. Police have already used GEDmatch data to solve dozens of cases, and it is unclear how many people have had their DNA data accessed without their knowledge or consent.

Christians, Gun Rights, and the American Social Compact

David French
The Dispatch
Originally posted September 2020

Here is an excerpt:

Why would I say that Christians are celebrating Rittenhouse? For one thing, a Christian crowdfunding site has raised more than $450,000 for his legal defense. Christian writers have called him a “good Samaritan” and argued that he’s a “decent, idealistic kid who entered that situation with the desire to do good, and, in fact, did do good.” (Emphasis added.)

Rittenhouse’s case comes on the heels of the Republican decision to showcase Mark and Patricia McCloskey at the Republican National Convention, the St. Louis couple that has been criminally charged for brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters who were marching outside their home.

The McCloskeys are obviously entitled to a legal defense, and I am not opining on the legal merits of their case (again, there is much we don’t know), but as a gun-owner, I cringed at their actions. They weren’t heroic. They were reckless. Pointing a weapon at another human being is a gravely serious act. It’s inherently dangerous, and if done unlawfully it often triggers in its targets an immediate right of violent (and potentially deadly) self-defense.

At the same time, we’re seeing an increasing number of openly-armed, rifle-toting conservative vigilantes not just aggressively confronting far-left crowds in the streets, but also using their weapons to intimidate lawmakers into canceling a legislative session.

In other words, we are watching gun-owners, sometimes cheered on by Christian conservatives, breaking the social compact. They aren’t exercising their rights responsibly, they’re pushing them to the (sometimes literally) bleeding edge, pouring gasoline on a civic fire, and creating real fear in their fellow citizens.

This is exactly when a healthy conservative Christian community rises up and quite simply says, “No.” With one voice it condemns vigilantism and models civic responsibility.

The information is here.

How to Fix a Broken Mental-Health System

by Norm Ornstein
The Atlantic
Originally published June 8, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

And, for people with the most serious diseases, who cannot recognize they are ill or who have deep psychoses that leave them detached from much of reality, we need to recalibrate the balance between civil liberties and the need to provide real treatment—the kind of wraparound, assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) that Leifman has pioneered in Florida—while making it easier, with appropriate safeguards, for family members to intervene to help their loved ones.

In Washington, the good news is that reforming the system to deal with mental illness is one of the few areas where there is serious bipartisan cooperation and action—including, in the Senate, Democrats like Debbie Stabenow, Chris Murphy, and Al Franken, and Republicans like Roy Blunt, Bill Cassidy, and John Cornyn. In the House, there’s a major bill cosponsored by Republican Tim Murphy, the body’s only psychologist, and Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson, a former psychiatric nurse.

Of course, there is bad news—this is American politics in 2016. The highly dysfunctional Congress is stymied from action so far even in areas that have broad and deep bipartisan support, like  Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, the opioid crisis, and criminal-justice reform.

The article is here.

Nana Cams: Personal Surveillance Video and Privacy in the Age of Self Embellishment

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.
Bioethics.net
Originally posted September 10, 2014

In David Eggers’ novel, The Circle, a fictional internet company creates and encourages users to video stream their lives. Wearing a small camera, people can share every experience of every day with whomever wants to follow them…except to the bathroom. The first streamers become instant celebrities and instant villains. The result is the end of privacy as anyone has known it. The upshot, according to the fictional company, is that if people know they are being watched (or might be being watched), people will behave more civilly. The echoes of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon notwithstanding, at the end of the book the protagonist suddenly wonders if the recording of all lives comes at too high a cost.

The entire blog post is here.