Opt-In to Law Enforcement Please!

I’m still in San Diego for the rest of this week and while hanging out at the KOA Resort hot tub, my husband and I got to talking with some other folks. When people hear what I do I often get “well, I’m not uploading my DNA anywhere.” I get so disappointed with this response because I already know they have little to no understanding of investigative genetic genealogy, yet they’ve made such an important decision because of the misconceptions about IGG.

Let me start by saying, law enforcement does not have unfettered access to your DNA profile when you upload to GEDmatch, DNA Justice or FTDNA. By the way, these are the only DNA databases we can access on law enforcement cases. They only see you as a match to their case kit. The case kit is the DNA profile from the crime scene. When you opt in to law enforcement, they see your name, email address, amount of DNA you share with the kit (cMs) and if you have a GEDcom or WikiTree associated with your account. They cannot see you at all if you don’t match their case kit. So no unfettered access to your DNA profile.

I also heard this that night: My family are all good people, we don’t have anyone doing bad things. You’d be surprised the “bad things” family members are doing that no one knows. But anyway, even if your family are angels and do no wrong, we still need you to opt-in to law enforcement use. We need your match to a case kit to help us find ancestors of the person who left DNA at a crime scene. Every match helps us to narrow down ancestors so we can narrow down our search with IGG and provide a lead to law enforcement. The matches are often so small, you won’t know the actual person we narrow down to because they’re a fourth, fifth or even sixth cousins, or greater. Doubt you know your sixth cousins.

We really need minority populations to upload to these databases because they are under-represented. No one wants to lose a family member or friend to a violent crime. But ask those who have lost someone and have waited 20 or more years for justice what they wouldn’t give to have people upload their DNA profile and opt-in to law enforcement. Your upload could bring peace to a family that has lost someone to violence.

If you have done a consumer DNA test with Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23&Me or FamilyTreeDNA, you can download your DNA profile, save it on your computer, and then upload it to GEDmatch (www.gedmatch.com), DNA Justice (only for law enforcement so always opted-in; www.dnajustice.org) and FamilyTreeDNA (www.familytreedna.com). You MUST opt-in at GEDmatch and FTDNA when you upload.