The last year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of cold cases solved in the U.S. and it’s largely due to the ability to match old DNA from crime scenes to relatives of uncaptured perpetrators.
That development came about thanks to the popularity of DNA ancestry sites. But now a change in the privacy policy of one large site is likely to end the ability to solve cold cases through DNA.
The Golden State killer was caught in April 2018 thanks to a DNA ancestry site that helped cops hone in on him and since then there have been major breakthroughs in more than 50 cases spanning 29 states.
The main database that police have been using is GEDmatch but in a turn of events, the free website switched its genetic privacy policy to prohibit its use by law enforcement, BuzzFeed News reported. Now users, who register with the site to trace their ancestral roots, have to opt in if they wished for their profiles to be made available in police searches.
Since then it has grown increasingly difficult for investigators to crack cold cases.
"There are cases that won't get solved or will take longer to solve," Lori Napolitano, the chief of forensic services at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, told NBC News.
Within hours of the privacy restrictions being imposed, the number of profiles that could be searched for by authorities on the database dropped to zero. That number has increased slightly as some registered users agree to have their profiles visible to police but it is still difficult for investigators to solve cases with the same success as they had in the last year.
When police first began using the technique, some raised privacy concerns for the millions of people who use genealogical sites to discover their heritage. At the time, Steve Mercer, the chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender argued that there were no strong privacy laws to keep police from trolling ancestry site databases, said
"People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family," Mercer said, adding that they "have fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated databanks."
However, law enforcement argued that their methods were in "the interest of public safety," NBC News reported.
"Police really want to do their job. They're not after you. They just want to make you safe," said Colleen Fitzpatrick, a genetic genealogist.
Anne Marie Schubert, the district attorney in Sacramento County, California, pointed out that, after police nabbed the Golden State Killer, it seemed that there was at least one case cracked every week but now the "pace of those cases being solved has reduced itself."
Curtis Rogers, founder of GEDmatch, explained that at the end of the day the site was created for genealogists and not law enforcement.
"I feel a big obligation to make sure it's used properly," he said of the website. "I don't want some half-cocked law enforcement person to do something that creates a story and ruins everything for everyone."
Rogers added that, while he was sorry that the privacy restrictions had to be put in place, he believed that doing so "set the whole future on a much stronger base," according to NBC News. "Two or three years from now, this whole thing will be forgotten."
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