GEDmatch

GEDmatch is an online service to compare autosomal DNA data files from different testing companies. The website gained significant media coverage in April 2018 after it was used by law enforcement to identify a suspect in the Golden State Killer case in California. Other law enforcement agencies started using GEDmatch for violent crimes, making it "the de facto DNA and genealogy database for all of law enforcement," according to "The Atlantic"s Sarah Zhang. In May 2019, GEDmatch then tightened its rules on privacy by requiring users to "opt in" to sharing their data with Law Enforcement. In December 2019, GEDmatch was acquired by Verogen, Inc, a sequencing company dedicated to forensic science. A new version of the existing site currently in development will focus on solving crimes using the more than 1.2 million DNA profiles hosted on GEDMatch's platform.
History.
GEDmatch was founded in 2010 by Curtis Rogers, a retired businessman; and John Olson, a transportation engineer, in Lake Worth, Florida, with its main purpose being to help "amateur and professional researchers and genealogists," including adoptees searching for birth parents.
GEDmatch users may upload their autosomal DNA test data from commercial DNA companies to identify potential relatives who had also uploaded their DNA data. Names of participants may be hidden by the use of aliases, but each account must have an email address attached to it. Users may share the ancestry of each DNA participant by uploading a GEDCOM file containing that person's ancestry, or by linking to the assigned DNA kit number from that person's profile at WikiTree, a free, shared global family tree. Tools available on the GEDmatch site include the ability to sort results by the closest matches to a user's autosomal DNA, determining whether one's matches also match to each other, using a genetic-distance calculator, estimating the number of generations to the most recent common ancestor, determining whether one's parents are related, and using various ethnicity calculators. These tools do not disclose raw genetic data to other users.
Tier 1 premium membership includes triangulation, matching segment search and a custom comparison system. By May 2018, the GEDmatch database had 929,000 genetic profiles, with 7,300 users who paid $10 a month for Tier 1 premium membership, which was used to pay for the $200,000/year server costs. In 2018, the website was still being run by Rogers and Olsen with five volunteers; it had no full-time staff. Rogers said in 2018 that the site had already helped 10,000 adoptees find their biological parents.
Access for law enforcement to the user data was given without informed consent; negative user reactions led to the implementation of an opt-in system for law enforcement matching. For new uploads, "opt in" is the default selection actively recommended for users, and what is being opted into is not explicitly stated.
In September 2019, the U.S Department of Justice released interim guidelines governing when federal investigators or federally funded investigations could use genetic genealogy to track down suspects in serious crimes. This first-ever policy covering how these databases should be used in law enforcement attempts to balance public safety and privacy concerns. The policy said “forensic genetic genealogy” should generally be used only for violent crimes such as murder and rape, as well as to identify human remains. (The policy permitted broader use if the ancestry database's policy allowed such searches.) Investigators should first exhaust traditional crime-solving methods, including searching their own criminal DNA databases.
Under the new policy, investigators could not quietly upload a fake profile to a genealogy website, as some had done in hopes of finding a suspect's distant relatives, without first identifying themselves. And the site itself must have informed its users that law enforcement agencies may search their data.
The policy also barred federal investigators from using a suspect's DNA profile to look for genes related to disease risks or psychological traits. Another provision attempted to limit situations in which federal investigators secretly take a DNA sample from a suspect's relative—from a discarded cup or tissue, for example—to help home in on a suspect. The policy said the person must give their informed consent unless federal investigators have obtained a search warrant. These guidelines applied to federal investigators and federally funded investigations but did not apply to state or local law enforcement agencies - the vast majority of investigations.
In November 2019, a Florida judge approved a police request for a warrant to search the database of GEDmatch.
As of December 9, 2019, GEDmatch was acquired by Verogen, Inc, a sequencing company solely dedicated to forensic science. For the 1.2 million DNA profiles, a new version of the existing site will focus on solving crimes. How much GEDmatch continues to serve genetic genealogical research has been heavily discussed since then. BuzzFeed News reported that Verogen hopes to monetize the site by charging for access to the database and tools for DNA analysis. Founder Curtis Rogers, in a website statement, announced "basic tools will remain free," that he will remain involved in all aspects of the business, and that Verogen will commit to the vision of a consumer genealogy site and take care of infrastructure and security/privacy. At the same time, Rogers claimed "genealogy has made our communities safer by putting violent criminals behind bars."
As of September 2020, there were about 1.45 million users on the site; and by October, the site had led to an estimated 150 arrests in cold cases.
Usage by law enforcement.
In December 2018, police forces in the United States said that, with the help of GEDmatch and genetic genealogy, they had been able to find suspects in a total of 28 cold murder and rape cases that year. Also in December 2018, Family Tree DNA allowed law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to upload DNA profiles from crime scenes to help solve cold crimes. As of that time, GEDmatch was not the only site that could be used by law enforcement officials to solve crimes using genetic genealogy.
White people are overrepresented on GEDmatch and are believed to be underrepresented in CODIS, the FBI's collection of DNA samples pulled from crime scenes, arrestees, and criminal suspects. Thus, GEDmatch may be especially effective in facilitating the arrests of white suspects who might otherwise have eluded law enforcement. On May 18, 2019, GEDmatch revised its privacy statement to users regarding the collection and use of genetic information, including the circumstances in which it may cooperate with law-enforcement use of its database. As of September 2020, GEDmatch has been credited for helping facilitate nearly 120 cold-case arrests and for helping in 11 "Jane and John Doe" identifications across the United States.
Parabon Nanolabs.
In cooperation with American law enforcement organizations, Parabon NanoLabs started uploading DNA evidence from crime scenes to GEDmatch in an attempt to identify perpetrators. In November 2018, Parabon was reported to be working on 200 such cases. In May 2019, they said they were solving cold cases at the rate of about one per week.
DNA Doe Project.
Two genealogical researchers, Dr. Colleen M. Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press, started the DNA Doe Project in 2017 to identify unknown bodies using GEDmatch. They use volunteers to construct the sometimes very large family trees resulting from genetic data, in order to identify missing persons. Their successes include the following:
Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Genetic Genealogy Program.
In 2018, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement set up a Genetic Genealogy Program to use GEDmatch to solve cold cases. They reported in 2019 that they had solved four cases. By the end of 2020, the program had led to 10 arrests/identifications and closed several more cases.
Data policy.
In April 2018, GEDmatch's privacy statement said it "exists to provide DNA and genealogy tools for comparison and research purposes." The statement said that this, "by its very nature, requires the sharing of information. Because of that, users participating in this site should expect that their information will be shared with other users."
After the arrest of the suspect in the Golden State Killer Case, co-founder Curtis Rogers said he spent weeks trying to figure out the ethics of the situation and legal options to pursue. He concluded that they did not have the resources to require police to obtain court orders to use the website. Rogers said, "It has always been GEDmatch's policy to inform users that the database could be used for other uses, as set forth in the Site Policy," and that "While the database was created for genealogical research, it is important that GEDmatch participants understand the possible uses of their DNA, including identification of relatives that have committed crimes or were victims of crimes." In late May 2018, GEDmatch updated its policy to say law enforcement could use the database to identify perpetrators of a "violent crime," meaning "homicide or sexual assault," or to identify the remains of a deceased individual. The number of people uploading their DNA increased from 1,500 per day to 5,000 per day after the DeAngelo case went public. By November 2018, there were 1.2 million GEDmatch website users.
In May 2019, GEDmatch was used to help with the arrest of a teenager who was charged with violent assault. This was the first and so far the last time GEDmatch had been used by Law Enforcement (and Parabon) for a case that did not involve homicide, rape, or kidnapping.
Civil libertarians have said the use of websites such as GEDmatch by law enforcement raises legal and privacy concerns. Professor Rori Rohlfs at San Francisco State University noted that, whereas California police had to get a judge's permission to search the CODIS police criminal database for a murder suspect's brother, they had no limitations when uploading a murder suspect's autosomal DNA to GEDmatch to identify relatives. In 2019, Charles E. Sydnor III, a Maryland delegate, sought a bill to prohibit law enforcement from using DNA databases for crime solving, but the bill was not passed. A state representative in Utah introduced a similar bill that would ban genetic genealogy searches by police.
Opt-in policy.
In May 2019, GEDmatch began requiring people who had uploaded their DNA to its site to opt in to allow law enforcement agencies to access their information. This change in privacy policy was expected to limit law enforcement agencies' abilities to identify suspects using genetic genealogy. By May 2020, about 260,000 GEDmatch users had opted in.
Despite GEDmatch's opt-in policy, in fall 2019, it was served with a warrant by law-enforcement in Florida, demanding access to "all" of its DNA profiles, including those of the vast majority of users who had not opted in to allow law enforcement access (at that time, approximately 185,000 of 1.3 million users had opted in). GEDmatch complied with this warrant.