Comment by i_am_proteus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by i_am_proteus | Hacker News Reader

> As specified in FamilyTreeDNA's Terms of Service, law enforcement can only receive information not already accessible to the standard user by providing FamilyTreeDNA with valid legal process such as a subpoena or a search warrant.

> Additionally, FamilyTreeDNA customers have the option to opt out of law enforcement matching entirely. If customers do opt out, they can still see their family matches but are excluded from being seen by law enforcement.

This does not make sense to me. I know that DNA can be taken physically from an individual with a warrant, so ostensibly that would hold with FamilyTree as well.

So: if one opts out, what is one opting out of? FamilyTree can't be suggesting that they'll withhold evidence because a customer opted out, can they?

"law enforcement can only receive information not already accessible to the standard user" = LE asking FTDNA for your DNA specifically

"law enforcement matching" = LE uploading suspect DNA to the service and looking for family members, who they will then contact for further investigation of relatives, which does not require a warrant.

due to a recent policy change, LE is obligated to identify itself as such before performing the latter type of search. you can ask FTDNA to exclude your information when a LE account looks for family matches.

Sounds like they're opting out of the warrantless variety of police searches. I'd imagine you can't opt out of a subpoena.

The opt out could be and opt in to have them delete your data after they give you the results. No-one is forcing them to keep it.

Are you suggesting they’d voluntarily delete your data?

Opt out, to me, just means that they’ll share your data if issued a subpoena. However, I don’t know if you could get a subpoena to search the entire DNA database of a company.

I'm suggesting they could delete your data (as well as many other companies), and the possibility is deliberately not mentioned, so they can pretend to respect your privacy by requiring a warrant.

You traditionally can't get a warrant to get the DNA of the cousin of a suspect in a crime. With a centralized DNA registry you can get partial matches. So perhaps those are opt-out?

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