Could your family tree land you in jail?

My friend and I have this discussion all of the time about privacy and technology. His attitude about all the advances in information technology and privacy is laissez faire: None of the invasions by technology into our private lives matters, he says, “if you’re not doing anything wrong.” Think again. What if your brother, or nephew, or cousin does “something wrong”? Can that bring the police knocking at your door in the middle of the night? It did to Michael Usry, a New Orleans based filmmaker, when someone in his family became a suspect in an unsolved rape. Here’s how it happened. Usry’s father had given a saliva sample to Ancestry.com. The cops called Ancestry and obtained a “familial genetic search” of Ancestry’s database to check against a semen sample at the crime scene. The Usry family tree popped up. And the police came knocking. The “familial genetic search” is not nearly as specific and precise as the DNA testing we hear about on CSI and on TV. It casts a wide dragnet for very general genetic markers. In fact, further analysis showed that Usry wasn’t a viable suspect after all. Oops. The real question is should the police have access to private DNA data bases at all, particularly if they are going to be running non-specific “desperation” tests like these that don’t lead to a specific suspect? Consider that most “donors” into a private data base gave their DNA with the expectation of some medical test being performed, not a law enforcement search for suspects. What solutions are there?

• Custodians of private genetic databases like Ancestry.com and 23andMe need to stand up to law enforcement bullying. Potential customers should press these custodians firmly on the privacy issue.
• Law enforcement should not have access to the content of the data base absent a search warrant for a specific profile to be confirmed by a specific test (not just a general dragnet test).

We, indeed, live in a Brave New World. Don’t let Usry’s nightmare become yours. If the police come knocking, tell them to come back with a warrant and do not answer questions without an attorney present. See the whole story. Click here.