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A security breach opened up access to a genealogy site’s DNA profiles
A security breach changed the permission settings on millions of profiles in GEDmatch, a DNA database used by genealogists.
US court let police search GEDmatch's entire DNA database despite protections
Michael Fields, a detective from the Orlando Police Department, has revealed at a police convention that he secured a warrant to search the full GEDmatch database with over a million users. Legal experts told The New York Times that this appears to be the first time a judge has approved this kind of warrant. New York University law professor Erin Murphy even told the publication that the warrant is a "huge game-changer," seeing as GEDmatch restricted cops' access to its database last year. "It's a signal that no genetic information can be safe," the professor said.
Court convicts murder suspect found through a DNA database
Authorities have been taking advantage of the public's ever growing interest in genetic genealogy to crack cold cases these past few years. California's police departments even arrested a former cop after a DNA database linked him with the series of murders and rapes committed by the Golden State Killer in the '70s and '80s. Now, a court has convicted William Earl Talbott II, a murder suspect who was identified through his relatives found on open DNA database GEDmatch. It's believed to be the first time a case cracked using the technique was brought to court -- and clearly, the evidence was enough to convince the jury to find him guilty of two counts of aggravated murder.
Police are using ancestry sites to track down more cold case suspects
In April, California investigators arrested Joseph James DeAngelo for some of the crimes committed by the elusive Golden State Killer (GSK), a man who is believed to have raped over 50 women and murdered at least 12 people between 1978 and 1986. Investigators tracked him down through an open-source ancestry site called GEDMatch, uploading the GSK's DNA profile and matching it to relatives whose DNA profiles were also hosted on the website. Now, using those same techniques, a handful of other arrests have been made for unsolved cases, some going as far back as 1981.
DNA is just another way we can’t opt out of data sharing
Growing up in California, serial killers are as much a fact of life as year-round citrus or having a bit of Spanish in your daily vocabulary. News of the Golden State Killer's arrest came as a surprise and a relief to most of us whose early lives were shaped by a generation of fear. The Golden State Killer raped at least 51 women and killed 12 people (that we know of). Our parents literally slept with guns and knives under the killer's shadow, and the many others like him.
