Orlando police Det. Michael Fields was sure he had the break he needed right in front of him to close in on a serial rapist: a list of people whose DNA partially matched the man he hunted. The list disappeared. After a year of criticism from privacy advocates and genealogy experts, the owner of a popular DNA-sharing website had decided law enforcement had no right to consumer data unless those consumers agreed. He persuaded a judge to grant him access to the entire database, the genetic records of more than 1 million people who never agreed to police search. Genealogical databases are a potential gold mine for police detectives, but law enforcement has plunged into this new world with few rules or oversight, intense secrecy and by forming unusual alliances with private companies that collect the DNA, often from people interested not in helping close cold cases but learning their ethnic origins and ancestry, the Los Angeles Times reports. There is no uniform approach for when detectives turn to genealogical databases to solve cases.
In some departments, they are to be used only as a last resort. Others are putting them at the center of their investigative process. Some have no policies at all. When DNA services were used, law enforcement generally declined to provide details to the public, including which companies detectives got the match from. There are growing concerns that the race to use genealogical databases will have serious consequences, from its inherent erosion of privacy to the implications of broadened police power. In California, an innocent twin was thrown in jail. In Georgia, a mother was deceived into incriminating her son. In Texas, police met search guidelines by classifying a case as sexual assault but after an arrest they filed charges only of burglary.