Dangers of making DNA results public for matching

[Observer9000]

I have some DNA results but a few people including family members have warned me not to submit to gedmatch and other sites because they can be used by government officials and other organizations to find people and such. Im not terribly concerned but there are people who I am directly related to that are and I dont want to violate their privacy or wishes. Is there any way to make results semi-public while still protecting family?

[Peterski]

Yes, when you upload your file to GEDmatch you can choose if you make it available to police or not.

[Luke35]

To add to what Peter said, you can set your GEDmatch upload to "opt out" of police access, you can also set your upload/kit to "research" only. Set this way, you will be able to use the ancestry calculators and see your relative matches -- but remain invisible to others.

[~Elizabeth~]

I made mine available for police access.

[Scandal]

I made mine available for police access.
Don't do that. Police can use your DNA against you if your DNA is present in a place where a crime was committed. Even if you did nothing wrong.

[~Elizabeth~]

Don't do that. Police can use your DNA against you if your DNA is present in a place where a crime was committed. Even if you did nothing wrong.

No, the police use it to crack cold cases of rapes and murders.

[~Elizabeth~]

Here is an example:

https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?396517-DNA-leads-to-92-year-old-black-man-being-arrested-57-years-later-for-rape-and-murder-of-White-woman

[~Elizabeth~]

The most famous example that used GEDMATCH is the capture of the Golden State Serial Killer.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7219171/



2. Case history: Golden State Serial Killer

The Golden State Serial Killer is a burglar, stalker, peeper, rapist and killer known to have murdered 12 victims and raped over 50 others in California from 1974 through 1986 [1]. The case, which remained unsolved for decades, was broken with the arrest and charging of Joseph James DeAngelo in Orange County on April 24, 2018 [7]. DeAngelo began as a burglar, known as the Visalia Ransacker in 1974–1975, operating in Visalia, California, between Fresno and Bakersfield. The severity of his crimes escalated to sexual assault as the East Area Rapist from 1976 to 1979, committing sexual assaults in the Sacramento area. He then graduated to murder, as the Original Night Stalker from late 1979 to 1986, committing homicides in Orange County and Santa Barbara [[7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]].

DeAngelo shows the classic features of recidivism, with his crimes beginning as a burglar, demonstrating not only repeated offenses, but escalating to cases of greater and greater severity including sexual assault and homicides. His experience as a police officer in two jurisdictions is thought to have increased his knowledge base to elude capture, but also to become emboldened to seek greater and greater excitement through escalating severe and violent cases. A note sent to the Sacramento newspaper and media outlets [1,16] provides a view into the psychology of the criminal, including building impulsive desire, uncontrollable urges, excitement seeking, feelings of superiority combined with self-esteem issues, and a need for dominance, achievement and recognition not fulfilled within societally accepted norms.

Unsolved serial crimes have become the subject of various cold case task forces, many of which have achieved remarkable success. Forensic tools unavailable when crimes were original committed have shed new light on previously unsolved offenses, permitting investigators to connect cases to establish previously unseen trends and combine intelligence. In the Golden State Killer Case, DNA evidence linked various crimes to combine what was originally thought to be unconnected offenses in different areas, to be the crimes of a single individual. Despite the development of single source DNA profiles at multiple crime scenes, there was no match made to a suspect, and no matching profile found in NDIS. The Golden State Killer case remained unsolved for over 40 years from the commission of the original crimes.

The break in the Golden State Serial Killer case came when DNA from the crime scene deposited by the assailant was further analyzed and compared to an open source genealogical website, GEDMatch [[8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]]. Presumably GEDMatch was used in favor of other ancestry and genealogical websites as other providers had more restrictive policies on law enforcement access and GEDMatch aggregated data from these other providers, with participants moving their data to GEDMatch specifically to search for relatives. On the website, individuals affirm a privacy statement acknowledging their genetic DNA information will be available for searching for the purposes of being located. Upon learning of the Golden State Killer case, GEDMatch updated their confidentiality statement to include information that genetic information can be searched by law enforcement [17,18]. Police investigators, with the assistance of a genealogist, reconstructed the family tree that included the crime scene profile, which matched to a probable 4th cousin [4]. It took approximately 4 months of family tree construction and investigative legwork to narrow potential suspects in the tree to males of the age and geography that could have committed the crimes. Among candidates developed as investigative leads, there will be those who may fit the profile, whose DNA does not match a direct comparison to the crime scene profile. Such was the case for a 73-year-old male at an Oregon nursing home who had his DNA sampled and was eliminated from suspicion [19]. While police had obtained a court order signed by a judge compelling provision of a reference sample, the man allegedly provided a sample with consent once investigators informed him of the purpose. The man's daughter was notified after the elimination and worked with police to help them rule-out additional people who could conceivably be the killer.

Eventually investigators narrowed their search for male relatives fitting the age and description to Joseph James DeAngelo. Placing him under surveillance, discarded DNA samples were obtained without the suspect's knowledge, including a discarded tissue and a swab taken from the handle of a car door. Once these samples were found to directly match those from the crime scene, DeAngelo was arrested and charged.