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Lord we pray for wisdom as science and law enforcement move forward to balance privacy and solve crimes. As public information increases, we pray for protection of our constitutional rights.

Home DNA testing kits are now affordable and commonplace and offer to provide you with detailed information on your family ancestry or a breakdown of your genetics. It also means there’s a number of private companies who now hold large databases of genetic data, and the FBI has gained access to one of the most popular.

As BuzzFeed reports, this week FamilyTreeDNA confirmed that it is working with the FBI and allowing local law enforcement access to its genealogy database. The number of DNA profiles stored in that database is thought to total over a million.

There are a number of active cases that haven’t been solved because there’s DNA evidence, but no one to match it to. By opening up the genealogy database to the FBI, FamilyTreeDNA is potentially going to help solve a number of those crimes. In particular, historical murders and rapes.

The FBI is already using publicly available DNA databases, but this is the first time it has gained access to a private database. It does, of course, raise some privacy concerns and a few FamilyTreeDNA customers may be contacting the company to ask what’s going on, and possibly how to go about removing their data from the database….

In its privacy statement, FamilyTreeDNA makes it clear that your personal information is never shared with third parties without additional consent. Your genetic information will never be shared with “pharmaceutical or insurance companies, employers, or third-party marketers without your express consent.” The terms of service got updated in December to state (in Section 6.B.xii) that law enforcement can make use of the database to “identify the perpetrator of a violent crime.” Sexual assault, rape, homicide, and the remains of a deceased all fall under that category….

(Excerpt from Fox News. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.)

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Karen Whaley Sholar
August 27, 2019

Sadly, I did take a DNA test. The scary part is that they can use it for much worse than crime-solving. Wish I hadn’t taken one.

Alan K. Veasey
August 25, 2019

High tech and big business are Big Brother and they are watching you.

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