Legal Debate Grows Over Police Use of Genetic Genealogy to Solve Crimes

There is growing debate in Canada about whether police should face new limits or potential bans on using genetic genealogy — a technique that uses DNA from consumer genealogy databases to help solve crimes — amid privacy, consent and legal concerns. Genetic genealogy, sometimes called forensic investigative genetic genealogy (IGG), involves uploading DNA profiles from crime scenes into public ancestry databases to find distant genetic relatives and then building family trees to narrow leads in criminal investigations.

The practice has been credited with helping law enforcement identify suspects in previously unsolved cases, including murders and violent crimes, by tracing relatives through commercial databases. However, privacy advocates and legal experts argue that using these sites — many of which were originally created for personal ancestry research — raises significant concerns about informed consent, civil liberties and the potential for misuse of sensitive genetic data.

At the centre of the debate are questions about whether police should be allowed to upload DNA to databases whose terms explicitly prohibit law enforcement access or participation, as some companies like MyHeritage have done. MyHeritage’s policy bans police use of its genetic data for criminal investigations, though investigators have sometimes used data generated from other sources to work around restrictions, prompting calls for clearer legal frameworks.

Supporters of stricter rules say that people who upload their DNA for ancestry research may not fully understand that their genetic information — and potentially that of their relatives — could be used in criminal probes. They also point to international debates and actions in other countries where some regulators have paused or limited law enforcement’s access to consumer DNA databases on privacy grounds.

Law enforcement agencies and forensic experts, on the other hand, argue that genetic genealogy has become a powerful investigative tool — akin to a new form of fingerprinting — that can yield leads in cold cases that traditional methods cannot, helping bring closure to families of victims.

CNI’s reporting highlights that lawmakers, privacy commissioners and police services are watching developments closely, and discussions about whether and how to regulate or ban police use of genetic genealogy are expected to continue as concerns from both sides of the issue are aired in public forums and judicial settings.