Australia’s criminal DNA database is expanding at a rapid pace, now holding nearly 2 million profiles.
One technique that is raising alarm bells is familial searching. It allows police to link family members to investigations based on partial DNA matches—even if they haven’t committed a crime.
So, Australia’s criminal DNA database is growing. Are you on it?
Criminal Defense Lawyer Felix Ralph, who penned the 2018 paper Convictions Through Kith and Kin, warns that this practice could lead to a troubling shift toward “genetic surveillance”.
“When you’re talking about a DNA sample size of one or two million people, you’re actually talking about eight to 10 million people because of the genetic interrelatedness,” Ralph said.
He explained that familial searching is a type of genetic profiling that illuminates “exactly who you’re related to”.
The technique relies on the idea that genetic markers are shared between family members.
With just a partial match in the database, police can expand their search to potential relatives—siblings, parents, cousins—and begin to investigate those individuals.
This has led to the identification of suspects in several high-profile cold cases, but it also means that innocent family members can become targets without any evidence of wrongdoing.
“You can’t control where your DNA spreads … and there are lots of examples of innocent people being sent to prison because of investigative stuff ups,” he said.
Ralph says that DNA was once added to national databases only after a court conviction. However, it can now be collected at the police station level.
“It should be reserved for serious cold case murders. But at this point in time we don’t have that legislation or regulation to determine what’s an appropriate thing to use this really powerful technology for and what’s not.”
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