An amicus brief challenging the Orange County District Attorney office's DNA collection program on appeal views it as a violation of privacy. But a genetic detective believes personal information posted on social media poses a greater threat to confidentiality.
“Someone's DNA is meaningless to me if I can't build their family tree and learn about their family structure,” said CeCe Moore, chief genetic genealogist at Parabon. “What is really concerning is how much information is collected about each and every one of us, that’s compiled into databases and then sold by the credit bureaus, and the people-search databases.”
The OCDA has gathered more than 182,000 DNA profiles by offering defendants local to the community the opportunity to dismiss misdemeanor charges in exchange for a DNA sample that remains permanently in a database.
But in her work, Moore refuses to use DNA databases or any data without consent.
“Everybody has the right to decide how their DNA is used unless they have been compelled to provide it because they've been convicted of a serious crime,” she said.
Orange County and district attorney Todd Spitzer are defendants in a lawsuit filed in 2021 by two University of California at Irvine criminology professors, William Thompson and Simon Cole, who allege the DNA collection program violates the California Constitution’s right to privacy.
However, OC Superior Court Judge William Claster granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss.
The Fourth Appellate District Court of Appeals is currently reviewing it. In that case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief in support of the professors, arguing that a person’s DNA contains sensitive information like biological familial relationships, ancestor origin, and genetic disease.
"Once a person’s DNA is in a police database, the possibility that they or their family members could become a suspect for a crime they did not commit increases, which is due to several factors, including sloppy policing, systemic lab problems, the vastly increased sensitivity of DNA collection and sequencing technology, the phenomenon of secondary transfer, and the fact that we cannot avoid leaving behind our DNA wherever we go," wrote EFF attorney Jennifer Lynch in the 68-page amicus brief.
Moore, who lives in South Orange County, contends that there are safeguards in place to minimize errors and that the benefit of investigative genetic genealogy to public safety outweighs the risks.
For example, DNA from the crime scene in Moscow, Idaho where four college students were stabbed to death in December allegedly matches the chief murder suspect, Bryan Kohberger, based on a sample from a relative's trash, such as GEDmatch, according to media reports.
"I was really happy to see in the Idaho case that they left DNA out of the affidavit because it really is not relevant," Moore added. "It is not to be used as the basis of arrest or eventual conviction and so far, law enforcement is handling it exactly the way that I would hope. The biggest impact is that the Idaho case could encourage Orange County and plenty of other jurisdictions to consider using investigative genetic genealogy much sooner in an investigation."