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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Ancestry declined to give law enforcement access to its DNA database, the company said Tuesday.
Ancestry received a request from law enforcement to access its genetic database in 2019, but the company said no, according to a transparency report released in late January. The warrant, reported earlier on Monday by Buzzfeed, came from a court in Pennsylvania, but the DNA analysis company said it was improperly served. The warrant could have let law enforcement officers have access to 16 million DNA profiles from the company's customers.
The transparency report comes at a time when law enforcement agencies around the country have cracked dozens of murder, rape and assault cases, some from decades ago, using a technique called genetic genealogy. The practice relies on investigators having access to a large cache of DNA profiles, and raises concerns among privacy watchdogs.
An Ancestry spokesperson said in a statement that the company hasn't received any followup since it fought the warrant. The company said it declined law enforcement access to its database as part of its larger commitment to user privacy.
"Not only will we not share customer information with law enforcement unless compelled to by valid legal process, such as a court order or search warrant, we will also always advocate for our customers' privacy and seek to narrow the scope of any compelled disclosure, or even eliminate it entirely," the spokesperson said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BananaPhone on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:47PM (1 child)
To think that private citizens paid to have these tests done only to be used later in a massive DNA dragnet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday February 05 2020, @04:45PM
If there weren't such a huge pool of idiots willing to submit their samples without demanding proper protections for their data, then proper protections would have been built *before* the database grew to become such a big target.
But since so many people happily submit to this without demanding real protections, the database now exists, and it WILL be misused. And there's no opportunity to improve the situation. The testing companies have no real incentive to do anything different. They can figure out who the sane people are by trawling their database of suckers for close relatives. And even if we patch the problem with a law now that would let people claw their samples back, get them deleted from the database, it won't matter. Because those databases have now been copied several times, the original company that collected the data doesn't have the only copy of the data, even if they delete it everyone is still screwed.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday February 05 2020, @03:48PM (3 children)
All sounds kind of theatrical.
Note to ancestry.org staff: Infiltration is a thing and I would check into the deep backgrounds of your entire staff, the FBI is probably already there and they sent that paperwork to give you a false sense of security.
Data cannot be protected from a totalitarian state, this is a law. If banks can't do it, and they can't, neither can you.
You might as well just give it all away for free you can't keep it private, and even if it were ethical or worthwhile what you were doing, the best you can do is *try* to keep one set of data pure so you know if someone else is making something up.
https://archive.is/eSLh7 [archive.is]
decultification.org
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday February 05 2020, @07:23PM
Then you should be extra careful Mr. Buttle [youtube.com]!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05 2020, @08:13PM
Want to decult? How about MORMONS.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 05 2020, @08:17PM
Data cannot be protected, period. Lots of people and organizations try. All of them fail sooner or later. Even on a personal level, as anybody who has ever gone through a divorce knows.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 06 2020, @10:40AM
… What this means is that in one instance Ancestry fought a (so they say) improperly formed warrant and apparently won. Once. (And even then they are apparently saying that they fought it because it was improperly served, not that they argued the warrant on the merits of it and won).
What it doesn't mean is that the next officer won't be more careful in how they apply their warrant request and service process. Or that a judge will agree with them. Or that they haven't already been served with orders or warrants that they have readily complied with because they were correctly executed.
It's still give them your DNA (or any member of your family does) and do something wrong and you could be caught. Or end up being framed by a multi-millions to one odds chance that just happened to roll true because it is held in awe by juries.
(One can also take the opposite position and say that Ancestry is ready and willing to obstruct law enforcement and fight to let a murderer go free because their customers are just that special.... That's the fun thing about debate.)
So, in summary: This is PR spin bullshit that really means nothing.
This sig for rent.