had bent its published rules to allow police in Utah to search for relatives of the perpetrator of a violent assault, the website changed its terms of service so that users now have to explicitly opt in for their DNA profiles to be included in law enforcement searches.
GEDmatch’s move follows a backlash from some genealogy enthusiasts against a decision to let its database be used in the case of a 17-year-old arrested for a violent assault on an elderly woman in Centerville, Utah. “In some of our Facebook groups, the reaction was really strong,” Debbie Kennett, a genealogist and honorary research associate at University College London, told BuzzFeed News.
“As people opt in, this will become the database I’ve been advocating for,” Leah Larkin, a genealogist in California who has argued that law enforcement searches should obey the principles of informed consent, told BuzzFeed News. The chance of finding relatives in a DNA database depends on its size. And the effective size of GEDmatch for police searches has suddenly dropped from around 1.2 million to zero. “The fear is that there are going to be active offenders who could have been taken off the street, but will now not be,” Holes, the lead investigator on the Golden State Killer case, said.
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