Julia Clements
We’ve all seen the commercials: Order a $59 DNA kit and learn about your ancestors. Or, send your third cousin—if he happens to be the Golden State Killer—to jail.
In 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested for decades-old murders using GEDmatch, a public genealogy website. As technology outpaces the law, however, it begs the question: Is this investigation technique of searching familial DNA constitutional?
Ask Julia Clements ’19, a politics and international relations major. For her College Honors project, she gave a presentation titled “Privacy in the 21st Century: DNA and the Fourth Amendment.”
“What drew me to [this topic] is there’s not a lot of scholarly opinion on it,” she said.
While testing sites such as Ancestry and 23andMe can prohibit law enforcement from accessing its data, customers can download their DNA from these sites and then upload it to public databases such as GEDmatch—where, until recently, it was unregulated.
“Now there’s a caveat on those DNA sites,” she explained. “[Law enforcement] has to exhaust other techniques, and the crime must have some sort of public safety risk.”
With so little written on the topic, she researched Supreme Court cases to learn more about searches and seizures. Only time will tell if familial DNA search becomes a Supreme Court case of its own.
“Pro: [The familial DNA] is public, so police should have access to it,” she said. “Con: The individual is consenting, but the family is not. This is an issue we should be concerned with. It could theoretically happen to anybody.”
For now, Clements is taking a gap year. Then, she plans to attend law school where she will concentrate in criminal and constitutional law.