Huffington Post – by Sara Boboltz
A Florida detective successfully obtained a warrant to search the company GEDmatch’s full database of user-provided genetic information, even if users had opted out of appearing in police search results, HuffPost has confirmed.
The warrant, signed by a judge in Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in July, will likely earn praise from law enforcement and criticism from privacy advocates wary of how DNA databases could be abused.
It appears to be the first warrant of its kind. Orlando Police Department Detective Michael Fields disclosed its existence during the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago last week, according to The New York Times.
Fields told the Times that the warrant has generated new leads but no arrests.
Public awareness of GEDmatch, a genealogy website and genetic database, rose sharply in April 2018, when California authorities announced they had arrested Joseph James DeAngelo ― the man they believed to be the Golden State Killer ― using the site’s publicly searchable data. DeAngelo is thought to have committed around 50 rapes and at least 13 murders in the 1970s and 1980s.
GEDmatch differs from well-known companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry because it does not offer DNA testing kits. Rather, people who have already had their genetic material tested can upload their profiles to GEDmatch, where they can try to find relatives they may not have been able to locate using their testing company’s site. The downside is that it offers a smaller pool of profiles — around 1 million compared to 23andMe’s 10 million and Ancestry’s 15 million.
DeAngelo’s arrest was an exciting moment for cold case investigators. They imagined how GEDmatch and other platforms could be used to track down the many rapists and murderers who have managed to evade the law ― bringing closure to countless victims and families.
Fields, for one, would like to see law enforcement get expanded access to such databases.
“You would see hundreds and hundreds of unsolved crimes solved overnight,” he told The New York Times. “I hope I get a case where I get to try.”
To others, however, the idea that police could start infiltrating genetic databaseswas chilling. GEDmatch began restricting law enforcement use of its site in May, mandating that officers identify themselves on the site and only use it to search the profiles of people who had opted in to law enforcement searches.
Maintaining consumer trust has long been vital to the biggest DNA testing companies, 23andMe and Ancestry. Both companies underscore their privacy policies to prospective customers and make a point to provide transparency reports about any law enforcement requests they receive.
Whether those companies could face increased pressure to open up to law enforcement remains to be seen.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/police-search-dna-database_n_5dc1dc4ee4b08b735d616096
“It appears to be the first warrant of its kind.”
It appears to be Communism, as well.
Hell, call a spade a spade… it IS Communism.
“Maintaining consumer trust has long been vital to the biggest DNA testing companies,…”
Yeah… RIGHT.
Unless by ‘consumer’ you mean the pigs, and NOT the public.
Too lazy to do real police work
So our tech companies are becoming the gestapos tool box
You know what you’re supposed to do in regards to this
Yet so far nothing major has broke out
I sure fckin hope I live long enough to see when and what it looks like when We the People really take back our country
It is indeed an odd world we find ourselves in. I think the communists’ greatest achievement is in removing the line that stood apparent and sentinel within the society of the men of the unites States of the Americas.
If you are my age you remember it. That single event that told you as it pulsed through your body, I am a man.
I see people my age who have never grown up. They sit and they play games at home and when out of the house they live in a little box that they carry in their hand. They are entranced by movies that were comic books when I was eight years old. They are childish. Somebody must think that by imitating Batman, they can carry their youth into their old age. At the same time they have the old children locked in a system where they work like a cog in a machine, just to get back to their make-believe world where they can pretend they are a little figure on a television as they grow fat with diabetes.
We have lost our childhood and have never reached manhood. We have forgotten the difference between children playing with matches and big people playing with matches.
Reminds me of the sheep on Animal Farm. Be young again, foolhardy, then you won’t get old and die.
ROTFLMAO
Amen boss
Class of 1963