While I have no problem with GEDmatch, this sort of misses the point. Yes, if you're a serial killer and rapist from the 1980s who left behind a trail of DNA evidence, by all means, don't upload your genome. However, what if your cousin uploads his?

It's easy to imagine a world where if they find someone that's likely a first (or second!) cousin of a rapist, that they then surveil the entire family and use that as evidence for warrants or other investigative tactics. In this case they cross referenced the familial identification with other factors, but imagine if they hadn't? They might have put a tail on everyone who shares a common grandparent or great-grandparent.

Ethically: law enforcement finds most violations of the law in places they look, so if it's unfair where they're looking, it's easy for that to translate into unfair outcomes. A society where police are watching every Capulet but not investigating the Montagues is one where most of the arrests will be of Capulets, regardless of who is actually committing crimes.

Therefore, when talking in populations, surveillance approximates punishment and familial surveillance approximates collective punishment of an extended family.

If you run a 99.99% accurate match against a database with 100,000 people, one of whom is the criminal, you are going to get 10 false positives.

If you're one of those false positives, good luck convincing a jury that the 99.99% accurate test is wrong in your case. There's a reason for why general warrants, and most kinds of fishing expeditions are illegal.

In this case, an man in Oregon was earlier a suspect, but direct DNA comparison ruled him out.

More likely, though, they will get a full confession. Serial killers often love to explain their work and take a lot of pride in confessing, because they're really messed up people.

As a result your DNA can be found at a location you have never been to.

If DNA evidence is being used to narrow down a small group of suspects this is less of a problem than if you are searching a population scale group.

Sure, but how could it possibly be linked to you?

You already exist in a criminal database, comes up as a hit, police create a narrative to fit it, even though it is a false narrative.

You argue that a judge could issue a warrant on an innocent person. However, warrants are only issued if there is enough plausibility that a person could be guilty of a crime. At the point the warrant is issued, the government can now force you to give your DNA. But that could happen right now.

Ultimately, in this case, the FBI barely exercised any of their authority. They didn't do any backroom dealings or use 'secret' laws. They just signed up to a genealogy website where people freely share their DNA information with the DNA sample voluntarily given to them by a rapist and murderer. The rapist has no right to any kind of privacy after giving his DNA away. Moreover, no one has any right to prevent a person who shares their genetic information from not disclosing it.

Because your cousin was arrested in 1999 for burglary and held for 30 hours until they realized they had the wrong guy.

That is exactly what the article is about: using large genetic databases to find DNA they have never collected in connection to an investigation.

What this means is that getting just a small fraction of the population into this database will enable it to provide leads for any DNA sample.

Umm...

The person who shared their DNA was neither a rapist or murderer but was simply related to one.

Chances are your DNA would be at each site in a significant amount and you may be amongst several people linked to all cases. Chances are that you being in all these places is not a coincidence but you have a motive to be there - be it a work or something else. You can be tied to these places in some other way.

If your cousin let this DNA DB shows his DNA and police can relate these, you are... you will have some interesting time with the justice system.

> However, what if your cousin uploads his?

If you've given your DNA freely to the government by participating in a violent crime, then hopefully you will be caught and your cousin will be relieved that yet another criminal will face justice.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/dna-dragnet-in-some-citie... [1] https://freedomoutpost.com/texas-cops-detaining-individuals-... [2] http://www.wlky.com/article/accused-killer-challenging-traff...

Link [1]: Again, this has to do with forced seizures. These are actually wrong, independent of any DNA collected. Nevertheless, the government did not do any of that here.

Link [2]: The police claim to have pulled the man over because of probable cause. They have a right to do this. They collected a cigar from his car. I'm not certain of the legality of this, tbh. But as to the legality of pulling over a car suspected of speeding? I'm pretty sure that's legal.

Look, I find government overreach to be a major problem. But this is not a case of government overreach. There was no warrantless anything in this case.

The relative of the rapist has no standing to sue the FBI in court for wrongful use of their information, because they freely provided it to a website. In all the cases you listed, the people (in my opinion) should have a right to have cases dismissed because this information was collected illegally.

Ignoring the intentionally bizarre phrasing ("if you've freely stoned yourself to death by committing adultery"), this is unrelated to the actual situation, which forces people arrested for a felony to surrender their DNA.

1) Both not restricted to "violent" crimes and not including all violent crimes, and

2) not requiring a conviction, or charges to be pressed.

When a man rapes a woman, he typically leaves behind his own DNA in the form of semen. That DNA is the only DNA the government has access to.

Contrary to what everyone here is saying, the government does not have access to the relative's DNA at all.

The phrasing was not intentionally bizarre. If you rape someone, then you consent to have your DNA examined by authorities so that they can catch you and put you in jail.

The irony in having to defend the idea of needing consent from a rapist has apparently escaped Hacker News's hive mind.

Then they went through the suspect’s trash to get an item with his DNA on it.

But, I'm trying to think about a situation where a secret identity might leave behind trace evidence that could be linked to a readily identifiable relative's samples, thus unmasking... say Spiderman.

I guess, any situation involving trespassing or physical presence under other circumstances, where a person might leave behind a single hair follicle, including the root of the strand.

It looks like it's free as in beer, but I don't see any reference to source code.

It's (relatively) public information.

I'm just pointing out the usage is common, I'm not interested in arguing about it.

The database was used to find leads (by finding people who shared segments of DNA with the killer, indicating some family relationship), but was not used to conclusively determine the killer. That was done with samples from the criminal himself.

My reaction on seeing this is "Great! Where can I upload my DNA information on the off chance I can also help find a monster like this?"