Method used to nab Kohberger is invaluable, but it exposes threats to genetic privacy | Opinion
Bryan Kohberger — who stands accused of killing University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle in November — was first identified as a suspect using a relatively new forensic technique called investigative genetic genealogy, according to recent court filings. Prosecutors have asked the court to seal information related to their search.
Genetic genealogy has proven essential in solving previously uncrackable cases, so it’s highly valuable. But because it repurposes commercial and public DNA databases — which police often use in ways that are equally accessible to members of the general public — it also exposes tremendous risks to privacy.
Those risks need to be reckoned with, and soon, so that the use of investigative genetic genealogy can be preserved without continuing to place the privacy of the general public at risk.
Because, make no mistake, your genetic privacy is at serious risk now.
A revolutionary technique
Genetic genealogy uses crime scene DNA in a new way.
Previously, DNA was used like fingerprints. Police would identify a suspect using traditional investigative means — canvassing the neighborhood, questioning witnesses, etc. — then collect a sample from their suspect. If it matched the DNA at the crime scene, it was good evidence they had found the perpetrator.
Genetic genealogy works the other way around. Police start with a DNA sample from the crime scene and enter it into public or commercial databases like GEDmatch, where people have voluntarily submitted their DNA, usually for genealogical purposes.
That allows police to find a relative of the perpetrator. Then they build that relative’s family tree. That family tree becomes a list of potential suspects.
The promise of genetic genealogy for solving crimes is hard to overstate. It has helped solve several murders in Idaho in the last few years — including even identifying the body of a bootlegger who was slain around 1914 and buried in a cave near Dubois. According to some estimates, over 500 cases had been solved nationwide using the new technique. That means hundreds of families have answers they’ve longed for, often for decades; hundreds of victims have obtained some measure of justice; and society is much safer for having hundreds of murderers and rapists off the streets.
The Angie Dodge case
Some of the most famous cases solved by genetic genealogy — the identification of Joseph DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer, or the identification of Lonnie Franklin as the Grim Sleeper — began emerging after 2015.
But before those cases drew national attention, genetic genealogy was used to produce leads in the investigation into the 1996 murder of Angie Dodge in Idaho Falls. In fact, it was used twice.
In 2014, it led to the abuse of an innocent man’s rights — Michael Usry Jr., a New Orleans filmmaker with absolutely no connection to the case apart from his DNA. He was interrogated for hours and a search warrant was issued to collect his genetic information, as The Advocate reported.
In 2019, it led to the apprehension and eventual conviction of Brian Dripps, the Nampa man who had actually murdered Dodge. So a case that had been unsolved for a quarter-century was finally closed, and Christopher Tapp, the man who had been wrongfully convicted of her murder and imprisoned for two decades, was finally exonerated.
Genetic genealogy can be a miracle in such cases. But its high rate of success in finding murderers and rapists demonstrates something else: Without noticing, nearly everyone in the country has already lost their genetic privacy.
Genetic privacy
Your genetic code is the most intimate information there is about you. Someone who has it can learn about everything from your ancestry to your predisposition to certain diseases. But it can’t be protected the way other private information can.
If you don’t want people to have your Social Security number, you just don’t publish it.
Genetic information is different because people inherit their genes from their parents. So if your brother publishes his DNA, he’s also made the decision to publish a lot of your genetic information — and you have no recognized right to prevent that or even to know about it.
Pretty much everyone in the country has already had their genetic information exposed in exactly this way. According to a 2021 paper, about one of every 10 Americans has their DNA in a commercial or public database. If you have taken a genetic ancestry test, you’re one of them.
It’s almost certain that one of your relatives has their DNA in one of these entirely unregulated databases. And that means someone who’s interested — law enforcement, a prospective employer, a random stranger, a stalker — can find out a great deal about your genetic code using similar kinds of familial analysis as police use in investigative genetic genealogy.
According to Axios, some of these databases have been shared with drug companies, biotech research companies, app developers and others. One database, FamilyTreeDNA, issued an apology to its customers in 2019 for failing to disclose that it had entered an agreement to share genetic information with the FBI, as the New York Times reported.
Rethinking privacy in the genetic age
It would have been good if policy makers had taken steps to protect genetic privacy before now. Protecting genetic information now, after it has already been thoroughly compromised, will require a sustained effort to claw back privacy through the regulation of public and commercial DNA databases.
The Kohberger case demonstrates this directly.
One reason that prosecutors have given for sealing genetic genealogy information is that it would expose the “names and personal information of the hundreds of innocent relatives” on the family tree constructed to find Kohberger.
Sealing the information would also mean that the people on that family tree have no way of knowing that the police and FBI were looking into whether they might have killed four college students — whether they were at risk of the same treatment Michael Usry Jr. faced. Maybe that’s a right they ought to have.
The genetic age requires a substantive rethinking of how the state and federal governments address privacy rights. The drafters of the Fourth Amendment did not contemplate a world in which one person could decide to publish their own DNA and thereby publish their parents’, siblings’, aunts’, uncles’ and cousins’ genetic information, as well.
And as the court considers the prosecution’s motion to seal information related to genetic genealogy, it should carefully weigh not only law enforcement’s ability to retain access to this technique but also the public’s right to have the information necessary for a robust debate on the future of genetic privacy.
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman based in eastern Idaho.
