Which is fine, I suppose, but your relatives don't have to do delete theirs, and the similarity of their DNA to your DNA means that someone could back out, to a certain level of confidence, whether you might be a match based on DNA contributed by them, with the familial relationship obtained and substantiated from other sources (vital statistics, etc.).
This is not new -- I believe there have been at least a couple of arrests made as the result of a suspect's relatives contributing DNA in lieu of actually obtaining one from the suspect directly -- and provided there's consent from the relatives, I can't see much grounds from restraining someone from allowing their own DNA to be used to build a case against someone else. It becomes a bit murkier if you start compelling people to contribute DNA to build a case against a family member, but even there I can see parallels to other types of evidence and it's not a clear slam-dunk to me that it ought to be barred unless the familial relationship is one where testimony would normally be covered by marital confidence or other privilege.
Yep. I do understand re: this not being new - worked in a forensic genetics laboratory, and I tell my family what they give up and expose us to if they contribute to one of these db's.
So caveat emptor as always...but yep I had just wondered in general about "right to delete" with respect to genomic data.
What exactly do you tell them that they're giving up and expose your family to? Kind of an odd thing to mention in a thread about a case where a family member's DNA exposed a criminal.
This is not new -- I believe there have been at least a couple of arrests made as the result of a suspect's relatives contributing DNA in lieu of actually obtaining one from the suspect directly -- and provided there's consent from the relatives, I can't see much grounds from restraining someone from allowing their own DNA to be used to build a case against someone else. It becomes a bit murkier if you start compelling people to contribute DNA to build a case against a family member, but even there I can see parallels to other types of evidence and it's not a clear slam-dunk to me that it ought to be barred unless the familial relationship is one where testimony would normally be covered by marital confidence or other privilege.