The U.S. Is Building Massive DNA Databases

Micah’s DNA (Photo credit: micahb37)

A variety of legal measures are needed to protect against potential abuses of gargantuan genetic repositories.

Cops can collect DNA when making an arrest, sometimes before charging a person with a crime.

This practice poses a threat to the civil liberties of innocent people

Starting in the mid-1980s, a serial killer murdered at least 10 women in the Los Angeles area. Nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper” because of the long dormancy between his crimes, he eluded capture for nearly 25 years. Then, in 2010, police arrested a man in California for what appeared to be a totally unrelated felony weapons charge. State law required the man to submit a DNA sample for a national DNA database. Typically a DNA database search looks for an exact match between a profile of DNA left at a crime scene by an unknown person and the profile of a known convicted offender. It focuses on 13 places in the genome (the full complement of our DNA) where bits of genetic material vary from person to person. If the crime-scene material differs in any of those 13 places, then the samples do not match, and investigators know that they do not have their suspect.

This time, however, the search was more subtle. It aimed to find DNA profiles that were similar, but not an exact match, to that of the Grim Sleeper. Such an inquiry was possible because in 2008 California became the first state in the nation to formally authorize a new kind of database search.

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Massive DNA Databases

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DNA links death row convict to 1998 rape and murder of Broward woman, BSO says
on December 5, 2023 at 12:07 pm
In the evening hours of Dec. 18, 1998, Boyd — then 39 — dragged Truppner to an isolated area of U.S. 27, about a mile north of Interstate 75, where he raped and murdered her, detectives say. The ...
Hackers stole a million people's DNA. What they'll do with it is baffling
on December 5, 2023 at 8:22 am
In 2018, one of California’s most prolific serial killers and rapists Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested after police matched his DNA to a relative who had had their DNA tested online. He later pled ...
Hackers access DNA data of millions of 23andMe users
on December 5, 2023 at 6:34 am
Some 6.9 million 23andMe customers had their data compromised after an anonymous hacker accessed user profiles and posted them for sale on the internet earlier this year, the company said on Monday.
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on December 2, 2023 at 9:24 pm
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RCMP officer Dean Lerat, a member of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, found many of his long-lost relatives using a DNA-testing kit. Now he does volunteer genealogy work to help others connect ...
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on November 27, 2023 at 6:17 pm
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on November 23, 2023 at 4:01 pm
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