More than a year after the GSK apprehension through genetic genealogy, the feds are finally moving and looking closely at what’s been going on, New federal rules limit police searches of family tree DNA databases:
The DOJ interim policy, which takes effect on 1 November, is intended to “balance the Department’s relentless commitment to solving violent crime and protecting public safety against equally important public interests,” such as privacy and civil liberties, a press release states. The policy says “forensic genetic genealogy” should generally be used only for violent crimes such as murder and rape, as well as to identify human remains. (The policy permits broader use if the ancestry database’s policy allows such searches.) Police should first exhaust traditional crime solving methods, including searching their own criminal DNA databases.
These guidelines are baby steps. They don’t impact people working in the private sector. But likely they presage more fully-fleshed responses.
One consideration is that when thinking about the intersection of genealogy and forensics we often view the latter as a black-box, with reliable technology and data. The reality is that degraded samples are not as easy to work with, and extracting information is not trivial. Because of this variation in quality, it seems possible that unless there is some self-regulation, eventually the government will exhibit greater and greater oversight on this space due to its relevance to law enforcement. There have already been enough scandals with conventional government forensic labs.
This is on my mind after a conversation with my friend David Mittelman. He founded Othram last year. It is one of the few companies that actually operate a lab targeting this space. He is very concerned about companies that sell lab services without operating a lab since they have no visibility on the data generation. He has suggested the community builds tools like Genome-in-a-Bottle to help self-regulate and verify that labs can do what they claim they can do. Obviously his interest is simple: excessive regulation on the private sector is not good for business, so he prefers that firms just get ahead of concerns and be transparent.
If genetics doesn’t self-regulate, the government surely will.
I think you are misreading the gist of it. There is nothing about quality control of whole-genome forensics, and probably shouldn’t be given that these genetic genealogy investigations aren’t used to justify searches or interrogations. They are just a way to justify collection of discarded DNA specimens by the potential suspects, and the legal bar for such a junk collection is so low that the data quality isn’t an issue.
I just see the new rule as a knee jerk reaction to the falling out between the genealogy vs. forensics worlds which started when DNA from the crime scene of assault was used for genealogy search (which was earlier limited to the bloodiest, most outrageous cries). The erosion of the informal guidelines resulted in all genealogy databases blocking blanket access and instituting opt in rules. So now the DOJ formalized the guidelines, but it’s too late. Not about to change anything.
PS: the assault case dynamics is interesting by itself, so I will summarize and add a couple of links.
It was a break-in and assault of an elderly Mormon church organist in Utah. The DNA evidence was collected for the break-in, but likely pointed to the assault as well if there was a lone perpetrator. The LEOs presented the case as likely pointing to a serial rapist, although there was no rape and no matces to other crime scene DNA specimens.
In the end they found a mildly developmentally disabled kid of a well-respected local Mormon family who also admitted to taking an indecent picture with his Sunday school teacher’s phone when he was 16. His discarded DNA came from a milk cartoon as was collected at a school lunch. As it is customary in the community, the Church worked with the victims for forgiveness and the defense lawyer extracted much leniency on the ground that the perpetrator was an all-American kid who strayed and will straighten up.
No predator found. No talk of a future horror prevented. Just a ToS violation by GEDMatch for a reason which seemed compelling at the time, but was anything but in the hindsight.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/27/us/genetic-genealogy-gedmatch-privacy/index.html
https://www.deseret.com/2019/7/20/8937060/i-pray-for-you-utah-woman-tells-teen-who-attacked-her-in-church
Note that a Federal policy is not binding on state and local departments. The Golden State Killer case investigation was conducted by local detectives. S&L departments are responsible for the vast majority of rape, murder, and violent crime investigations and prosecutions.
I should add that stranger rape cases are the most likely to have DNA of the perpetrator available.