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Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA
Fusion.net ^

Posted on 10/20/2015 8:18:02 PM PDT by Altariel

When companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe first invited people to send in their DNA for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests, privacy advocates warned about the creation of giant genetic databases that might one day be used against participants by law enforcement. DNA, after all, can be a key to solving crimes. It “has serious information about you and your family,” genetic privacy advocate Jeremy Gruber told me back in 2010 when such services were just getting popular.

Now, five years later, when 23andMe and Ancestry both have over a million customers, those warnings are looking prescient. “Your relative’s DNA could turn you into a suspect,” warns Wired, writing about a case from earlier this year, in which New Orleans filmmaker Michael Usry became a suspect in an unsolved murder case after cops did a familial genetic search using semen collected in 1996. The cops searched an Ancestry.com database and got a familial match to a saliva sample Usry’s father had given years earlier. Usry was ultimately determined to be innocent and the Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a “wild goose chase” that demonstrated “the very real threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by law enforcement access to private genetic databases.”

The FBI maintains a national genetic database with samples from convicts and arrestees, but this was the most public example of cops turning to private genetic databases to find a suspect. But it’s not the only time it’s happened, and it means that people who submitted genetic samples for reasons of health, curiosity, or to advance science could now end up in a genetic line-up of criminal suspects. ADVERTISING

Both Ancestry.com and 23andMe stipulate in their privacy policies that they will turn information over to law enforcement if served with a court order. 23andMe says it’s received a couple of requests from both state law enforcement and the FBI, but that it has “successfully resisted them.”

23andMe’s first privacy officer Kate Black, who joined the company in February, says 23andMe plans to launch a transparency report, like those published by Google, Facebook and Twitter, within the next month or so. The report, she says, will reveal how many government requests for information the company has received, and presumably, how many it complies with.

“In the event we are required by law to make a disclosure, we will notify the affected customer through the contact information provided to us, unless doing so would violate the law or a court order,” said Black by email.

Ancestry.com would not say specifically how many requests it’s gotten from law enforcement. It wanted to clarify that in the Usry case, the particular database searched was a publicly available one that Ancestry has since taken offline with a message about the site being “used for purposes other than that which it was intended.” Police came to Ancestry.com with a warrant to get the name that matched the DNA.

“On occasion when required by law to do so, and in this instance we were, we have cooperated with law enforcement and the courts to provide only the specific information requested but we don’t comment on the specifics of cases,” said a spokesperson.

As NYU law professor Erin Murphy told the New Orleans Advocate regarding the Usry case, gathering DNA information is “a series of totally reasonable steps by law enforcement.” If you’re a cop trying to solve a crime, and you have DNA at your disposal, you’re going to want to use it to further your investigation. But the fact that your signing up for 23andMe or Ancestry.com means that you and all of your current and future family members could become genetic criminal suspects is not something most users probably have in mind when trying to find out where their ancestors came from.

“It has this really Orwellian state feeling to it,” Murphy said to the Advocate.

If the idea of investigators poking through your DNA freaks you out, both Ancestry.com and 23andMe have options to delete your information with the sites. 23andMe says it will delete information within 30 days upon request.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: dna; donutwatch; genealogy; orwellian
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1 posted on 10/20/2015 8:18:03 PM PDT by Altariel
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To: Altariel

I find this deeply disturbing, I wouldn’t trust these people.


2 posted on 10/20/2015 8:20:11 PM PDT by Lucy Hamilton (Lucy from Occupied Europa)
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To: Altariel

And THIS is why you never send your DNA out for this kind of nonsense....it might find its way anywhere; like a crime scene that you have nothing to do with.


3 posted on 10/20/2015 8:21:14 PM PDT by LongWayHome
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To: Altariel

Hmmmmm? Gestapo, KBG, FBI, just think what Hitler would have done with it?


4 posted on 10/20/2015 8:21:20 PM PDT by Bringbackthedraft (In the words of Oliver Hardy; "Another fine mess you have gotten us into.")
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To: Altariel

Unreal. I don’t think we’re in America anymore, Toto.


5 posted on 10/20/2015 8:24:45 PM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (Thank you mom for not being "pro-choice." Amen.)
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To: Altariel

23 and Me was started by the wife of the founder of Google:

So, yeah, she does charge a fee when people send in their saliva samples, sure.

What OTHER component will later emerge as her revenue stream, huh..?

Let’s put on our thinking caps, here.

Isn’t it freaking OBVIOUS...?


6 posted on 10/20/2015 8:27:22 PM PDT by gaijin
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To: Altariel


7 posted on 10/20/2015 8:27:29 PM PDT by JoeProBono (SOME IMAGES MAY BE DISTURBING VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED;-{)
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To: Altariel

No problem.

Assert privilege under the 1996 Telecom Act and CALEA.

I’ll bet they do it....


8 posted on 10/20/2015 8:30:59 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: Altariel

Anyone remember what happened to the guy who created the secure portal that Snowden used? The gubmint’ leaned om him, that simple.


9 posted on 10/20/2015 8:33:30 PM PDT by max americana (fired every liberal in our company at every election cycle..and laughed at their faces (true story))
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To: Altariel
Google

Facebook

Ancestry.com

All false 'store fronts' run by the gubmint.

Next?

10 posted on 10/20/2015 8:45:13 PM PDT by Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America
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To: Altariel

Not good. But misleading headline. They’re simply responding to court-ordered subpenas for information regarding specific people suspected of committing crimes as would be the case with any number of other websites, say, subpenas for the various ebay killers, rapists, etc. The good parts this article is reporting is that:

1.) Anyone stupid enough to give their DNA to these sites can remove it (except of course probably not for the bazillion backups that were probably made anyway.)

2. The companies will make public reports on the number of such subpenas received.


11 posted on 10/20/2015 8:50:25 PM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: Altariel

How long till a person will have to submit a DNA sample to establish who you are for:

- receiving Social Security Benefits
- Disability payments
- receiving an IRS refund
- gaining employment
- graduating
- being born


12 posted on 10/20/2015 8:58:09 PM PDT by taxcontrol ( The GOPe treats the conservative base like slaves by taking their votes and refuses to pay)
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To: Altariel

Wow, who could have seen this coming.


13 posted on 10/20/2015 9:08:25 PM PDT by The Antiyuppie ("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day".)
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To: taxcontrol

“How long till a person will have to submit a DNA sample to establish who you are for:

- receiving Social Security Benefits
- Disability payments
- receiving an IRS refund
- gaining employment
- graduating
- being born”

Unless something very radical happens, I’d give it 5-10 years.


14 posted on 10/20/2015 9:09:13 PM PDT by The Antiyuppie ("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day".)
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To: Altariel; COUNTrecount; Nowhere Man; FightThePower!; C. Edmund Wright; jacob allen; Travis McGee; ..
Whoa!!! Didn't see THAT coming!!!!

At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason ~ nully's son

The biggest killer of mankind

Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!

To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...


15 posted on 10/20/2015 9:12:16 PM PDT by null and void (Reality 1, Liberal Academics 0)
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To: taxcontrol

What..no DNA needed to vote? /sarc


16 posted on 10/20/2015 9:18:03 PM PDT by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: Altariel; null and void; Old Sarge; Velveeta; Myrddin; Califreak; Salvation; WildHighlander57; ...
.

Check out article ... and comments.

Thanks, Nully.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

17 posted on 10/20/2015 9:19:51 PM PDT by LucyT
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To: Altariel

ROTFLMAO. never saw that coming.

/sarc


18 posted on 10/20/2015 9:32:57 PM PDT by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
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To: Altariel

BookMark


19 posted on 10/20/2015 9:47:35 PM PDT by thesearethetimes... (Had I brought Christ with me, the outcome would have been different. Dr.Eric Cunningham)
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To: Lucy Hamilton

If you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.


20 posted on 10/20/2015 9:51:41 PM PDT by Oztrich Boy (It's funny 'cos it's trure - Homer)
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