'Game-Changer' Warrant Let Detective Search Genetic Database

sites, Ancestry.com and 23andMe, have long pledged to keep their users’ genetic information private, and a smaller one, GEDmatch, severely restricted police access to its records this year.

DNA policy experts said the development was likely to encourage other agencies to request similar search warrants from 23andMe, which has 10 million users, and Ancestry.com, which has 15 million. If that comes to pass, the Florida judge’s decision will affect not only the users of these sites but also huge swaths of the population, including those who have never taken a DNA test.

Story continuesMost users of genealogy services have uploaded their genetic information in order to find relatives, learn about ancestors and get insights into their health — not anticipating that police might one day search for killers and rapists in their family trees. After a revolt by a group of prominent genealogists, GEDmatch changed its policies in May.

Fields described his methods at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago last week. Logan Koepke, a policy analyst at Upturn, a nonprofit in Washington that studies how technology affects social issues, was in the audience. After the talk, “multiple other detectives and officers approached him asking for a copy of the warrant,” Koepke said.

Because of the nature of DNA, every criminal is likely to have multiple relatives in every major genealogy database. Without an outcry, Murphy and others said, warrants like the one obtained by Fields could become the new norm, turning all genetic databases into law enforcement databases. Both sites publish transparency reports with information about subpoenas and search warrants they receive. 23andMe says it has received seven data requests relating to 10 customers and has not released any data. Ancestry.com said in its 2018 report that it had received 10 “valid law enforcement requests” that year and complied with seven, but that all the cases involved “credit card misuse, fraud and identity theft,” not requests for genetic information.

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