A CHOICE.
The conundrum for the company: What to do? How to respond?
FamilyTree’s legal analysis indicated the FBI had probable cause, by the sheer numbers. That was proven mathematically by a study in Science in November 2018, which showed that the scope of current DNA databases can identify 60 percent of Americans of European ancestry.
“They have (a) probable cause statement in that paper,” said Greenspan. “It’s reality … I could either pretend it didn’t exist—or I could try like heck to manage it.
“You roll with the punches, you do the best you can,” the CEO added.
The consequent headlines and criticism, however, amounted to a “very painful experience”—with accusations and outrage from some.
Last week, FamilyTreeDNA issued an update to the terms of service—as well as a privacy statement in regard to the law enforcement matching preferences. The changes, announced by email to all the FamilyTreeDNA members, are an attempt to further regulate FamilyTree database searching for law enforcement—and to make sure that the customers have the option to not assist it. All agencies have to register to upload DNA samples and get a listing of closest relatives—and law enforcement will have to go through a review and approval process at FamilyTreeDNA. And the searches will be limited to cases of identifying deceased remains—or identifying rapists and murderers, Greenspan said.
The new opt-out or opt-in process will affect customers differently around the world. The United States and the rest of the world will automatically be opted in, but given an opt-out option. Those in Europe are the reverse, automatically opted-out with the possibility of opting in to assist police. (The deceased are automatically opted-in in America, and opted-out in Europe.)
Additionally, FamilyTreeDNA set up a citizens’ panel of six genealogists and a bioethicist to comment on the direction that the company would take with respect to criminal investigations.
One of the panel members is Roberta Estes, a FamilyTreeDNA volunteer group project administrator. Estes recently explained in her blog post how she came about her personal support of using genealogical databases to find violent criminals; namely, her own child was kidnapped more than 30 years ago. Although her child was recovered weeks later, about a thousand miles away, and brought back home, she wrote that she can’t help but be overcome emotionally by some of the children and families who aren’t so lucky. She can’t bring back a victim, she writes, but she “can help to offer them closure and justice by including my DNA in both databases.”
Greenspan said it was Estes’ story that helped guide him accordingly, by working with detectives.
“We’re only dealing with the worst of the worst crimes … exclusively on cases that are murder and sexual assault,” said Greenspan. “We didn’t sign up ever to be a law-enforcement group. We were confronted with one of those greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number definition of utilitarian (problems).”
GENEALOGY COMPANIES, AND THE NUMBERS.
Some indications indicate Greenspan may have public opinion on his side. A recent paper in PLOS One featured a survey of 1,500 people—and indicated that some 90 percent of people at-large support the use of genealogy the way law enforcement has thus far used it to catch cold-case killers and serial rapists.
FamilyTree’s opt-out option may be proving the point still further. In the week since an opt-out was given to American customers, seven-tenths of 1 percent have opted out, with five-tenths coming the very first day of the announcement. (Roughly 10 percent of FamilyTreeDNA’s total customer base is from Europe, and was automatically removed from law enforcement searches last week. At the same time, a thousand Europeans have opted back in to help American cops, and the remaining customers will be sent letters of encouragement to do so, as well, Greenspan said.)
The competitors have taken the opposite stance. Ancestry and 23andMe both contend they vigilantly defend their members’ privacy. They issue intermittent “transparency reports” that indicate minimal requests from law enforcement worldwide—and even fewer issuances of users’ information.
For instance, the latest quarterly report produced by 23andMe last month indicates five data requests—and “no customer information … turned over in any of the requests,” according to a spokesman. Ancestry says it received 10 requests from law enforcement in 2018—all related to credit-card fraud and misuse, and identity theft. Police got the data in seven of the cases, they said.
Both companies strenuously denied cooperating with law enforcement, in answer to Forensic Magazine queries.
GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA may have some overlap, but they also are not identical. So using both would presumably amplify the search power, if both databases are used to find potential relatives. It would only strengthen the ability to find a majority of people in America.
“I think that the plan should be if law enforcement has a file, if I was them, I would put it in both databases,” he said. “They’re not a competitor. Maybe we’re competing who can do the most good.”
The power of adding FamilyTreeDNA’s database to genealogy searches have already started to mount, the arrests accumulating week after week. James Alan Neal, now 72, was arrested earlier this year in the abduction and murder of 11-year-old Linda O’Keefe in Orange County, Calif. as she walked home from school in 1973. Michael A. Soares, now 33, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the “ambush” hammer attack murder of John Fay, 66, who was jogging in a park in Warwick, R.I., one spring day in 2013. A garage repairman named Kevin Konther was arrested in California in January on charges related to the rape of a 9-year-old girl and a woman in the 1990s. And last month, 52-year-old Jerry Westrom was arrested and charged with one count of second-degree murder for the 1993 slaying of a 35-year-old woman named Jeanie Ann Childs in South Minneapolis.