About 3 years ago, I set up a Google Alert to let me know when there were articles that pop up online in reference to “Genetic Genealogy”. At first, I received a couple of emails a week. Then, in April 2018, my inbox began to be flooded by emails regarding news stories surrounding law enforcement use of DNA paired with genetic genealogy to solve cold cases that were, in some cases, decades old.
This sparked a debate within the genealogical community that is ongoing. Some were in favour of law enforcement use of DNA databases and others felt it was an invasion of their privacy. The purpose of this blog post is not to rehash this debate nor offer my own personal opinions on the matter but simply to point those that require more information to a resource. The problem is that there has been a lot of misinformation, assumptions and, quite frankly, poorly reported media stories floating out there that have been preventing people from making an informed decision to take a DNA test or to continue usinig the DNA databases available.
At RootsTech 2020 in Sault Lake City on February 27, 2020, DNA guru, Blaine Bettinger, laid to rest many of the myths enshrouding the topic of law enforcement use of DNA databases by addressing the policies of 5 of the major players including 4 testing companies: Ancestry, 23&Me, MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA as well as 3rd party DNA database GEDmatch which is now owned by a forensics company called Verogen Inc. His talk was titled “DNA, Genealogy, and Law Enforcement: All the Facts“. What I appreciated most about Blaine’s talk was that it was factual, unbiased and was aimed to educate the listeners on the position of each company on the use of their databases by law enforcement. This allows individuals to make an educated decision for themselves.
Watch Blaine Bettinger’s talk by clicking on the image below for free!
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