While concerns about unrestricted access to genetic information gathered by testing companies had swelled since April, when police used a genealogy website to ensnare a suspect in the decades-old case of the Golden State Killer, that site, GEDmatch, was open-source, meaning police were able to upload crime-scene DNA data to the site without permission.
The latest arrangement marks the first time a commercial testing company has voluntarily given law enforcement access to user data.
Thanks to its millions of customers, FamilyTreeDNA's "Cooperation" with the FBI more than doubles the amount of genetic data law enforcement already had access to through GEDmatch.
According to BuzzFeed, and as confirmed by the company, on a case-by-case basis the company has agreed to test DNA samples for the FBI and upload profiles to its database, allowing law enforcement to see familial matches to crime-scene samples.
Last summer, FamilyTree DNA was among a list of consumer genetic testing companies that agreed to a suite of voluntary privacy guidelines, but as of Friday morning, it had been crossed off the list after it was revealed that the company had been lying all along.
Some in the field have begun arguing that a universal, government-controlled database may be better for privacy than allowing law enforcement to gain access to consumer information: after all what's the difference if the companies will simply hand over all the information secretly.
Why would it tell the truth: just like search engines and social networks, where the user is the product, and all the information about the user is carefully collected, isolated and stored, then sold to the highest bidder, or quietly handed over to the government, consumer DNA testing has become a giant business: Ancestry.com and 23andMe Inc. alone have sold more than 15 million DNA kits.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-01/one-biggest-home-dna-testing-companies-secretly-sharing-data-fbi
The latest arrangement marks the first time a commercial testing company has voluntarily given law enforcement access to user data.
Thanks to its millions of customers, FamilyTreeDNA's "Cooperation" with the FBI more than doubles the amount of genetic data law enforcement already had access to through GEDmatch.
According to BuzzFeed, and as confirmed by the company, on a case-by-case basis the company has agreed to test DNA samples for the FBI and upload profiles to its database, allowing law enforcement to see familial matches to crime-scene samples.
Last summer, FamilyTree DNA was among a list of consumer genetic testing companies that agreed to a suite of voluntary privacy guidelines, but as of Friday morning, it had been crossed off the list after it was revealed that the company had been lying all along.
Some in the field have begun arguing that a universal, government-controlled database may be better for privacy than allowing law enforcement to gain access to consumer information: after all what's the difference if the companies will simply hand over all the information secretly.
Why would it tell the truth: just like search engines and social networks, where the user is the product, and all the information about the user is carefully collected, isolated and stored, then sold to the highest bidder, or quietly handed over to the government, consumer DNA testing has become a giant business: Ancestry.com and 23andMe Inc. alone have sold more than 15 million DNA kits.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-01/one-biggest-home-dna-testing-companies-secretly-sharing-data-fbi
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