Just because something is legal does not mean it is right. In the world of forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG) this truth is playing out in ways that should alarm anyone who values privacy and trust. Picture this: a law-enforcement agency, determined to crack a case, quietly searches a genetic genealogy database. The database’s terms and conditions could not be clearer—law-enforcement use…
Should professional genealogists, by necessity, be included in the forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG) process? If there is any hope of ensuring that FIGG continues to be a trusted tool able to be used by law-enforcement for solving cold case homicides and sexual assaults, as well as the identification of unidentified-human-remains (UHR), then the answer needs to be a resounding ‘YES.’  …
The way in which a forensic/law enforcement investigator goes about approaching an investigation into a crime really isn’t that dissimilar to the way a genealogist goes about approaching an investigation into establishing facts relevant to family history. Both seek to establish, as closely as possible, and with the aim of being beyond any reasonable doubt, the facts in relation to a matter under…
On 24 January 2019, Seth Augenstein, Senior Science writer for ‘Forensic Magazine’, reported that the State of Maryland in the United States of America, had introduced a Bill into State Legislature for debate that would effectively see the use of Forensic Genealogy prohibited.[1] The premise of the introduction of the Bill, and the perceived nature of the debate that would ensue, would centre around…
It is important to realise that genealogical DNA databases are viewed and used by law enforcement investigators in exactly the same way as other sources or databases that are non-genealogical related. That is, they are used to establish a pool of ‘persons-of-interest,’ and then through old-fashioned detective work, that pool is narrowed down to a few possible suspects that will undergo…
Following on from Part 1, and having established that the use of genealogical DNA bases as a source of direct identification evidence of a suspect in Court is not accepted by the Court, attention will now turn to how genealogical DNA databases are used by investigators to widen a pool of suspects when the pool of suspects, identified through more ‘routine’ investigative techniques, has gone…