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posted by takyon on Friday April 27 2018, @12:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-DNA,-please dept.

The Orange County Register reports:

[...] one of California's most prolific serial killers and rapists was caught by using online genealogical sites to find a DNA match, prosecutors said Thursday. Investigators compared the DNA collected from a crime scene of the Golden State Killer to online genetic profiles and found a match: a relative of the man police have identified as [the suspect, who was arrested.]

[...] Authorities didn't give the name of the site, one of many, like Ancestry and 23andMe, that allow people to send in their DNA and find long-lost relatives. [...] Contacted Friday, representatives of both Ancestry and 23andMe.com said the sites weren't involved in the case.

takyon: Also at NYT, The Sacramento Bee, NPR, and CNN, which added:

When police announced they had finally caught the Golden State Killer, Bruce Harrington had a simple message for the politicians who fought his tireless efforts to expand the California's criminal offender DNA database. "You were wrong," he said.

Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed in 1980, spent years in front of public safety committees, pleading with them to embrace DNA technology. "And frankly I ran into a buzz saw of opposition."

Many state elected officials and rights groups fiercely opposed any attempt by the state to expand its DNA collection database. Critics cited the privacy rights of people in police custody and questioned the constitutionality of allowing the state to gather DNA samples without evidence of guilt.

In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 69, known as the "DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act." It gave the state broader powers to collect DNA. Now, it could get samples from anyone not just convicted of a felony, but even arrested for one. In some cases, authorities could also collect DNA from misdemeanor arrests.

Say goodbye to your genetic privacy. We have killers to catch.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday April 27 2018, @05:47PM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday April 27 2018, @05:47PM (#672677) Journal

    It actually IS a good method.

    First thing a barber does is run a comb through your hair. He gets several hairs with roots still attached. Golden.
    Same as on your hair brush, easily spotted by prowling neighbor.

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