The U.S. May Soon Have a De Facto National DNA Database

guest · Mar 20, 2019

The U.S. May Soon Have a De Facto National DNA Database
We need to close the loopholes that allow law enforcement to take advantage of consumer genetics
March 19, 2019
https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/national-dna-database-law-enforcement-genetic-genealogy.html

• Imagine the federal government enacted a law requiring all U.S. residents to provide law enforcement with their DNA profile so police could solve more crimes. Would you be OK with such a system?
• Imagine instead that the federal government established a database for which people could volunteer genetic profiles—but that the decision about whether to volunteer your DNA belonged not to you, but to your third cousin. Would you be OK with that?

Whether you like it or not, the United States has effectively already adopted this second system.
Since April 2018, law enforcement investigations stemming from DNA searches in consumer genetics databases have led to nearly three dozen arrests. [...] were identified through partial matches between crime scene DNA samples and the genetic profiles of often-distant relatives shared on consumer platforms [...]

Law enforcement use of consumer genetics platforms in this way amounts to a massive failure of democratic accountability.
Unless we change course, the United States will soon be home to a de facto national DNA database—something that no U.S. jurisdiction has suggested would be appropriate.
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