Just as the prominence of forensic genetic profiling has grown, so has its notoriety. It adds that it has continued to solve cases using data from people who have opted to allow its use in criminal cases. Parabon acknowledges that the rule change at GEDMatch substantially restricted its main source of DNA data, but says this was a temporary setback. At the same time, it is facing competition from forensic-genealogy companies that are trying to stake their own claims in the field. It has also continued work on another strategy: attempting to use DNA to reconstruct faces. In the year since then, the restrictions on GEDMatch’s data have forced Parabon to forge ahead while navigating new controls limiting access to genealogy data. That proved to be a challenge for the company, and for forensic genetic genealogy. Overnight, Parabon lost its major source of DNA data. In response, Rogers required the site’s millions of users to specifically opt in to law-enforcement use. That triggered an immediate backlash from genealogists, privacy experts and the wider public at the violation of GEDMatch’s agreement with its users. The company traced several partial DNA matches to individuals living in the area, and narrowed in on a suspect, a teenaged boy who was a relative of one of them. When it was granted, Parabon, which had initially refused the case, signed on. The assailant had left traces of blood at the scene, and the detective in charge of the case, Mark Taggart, made a personal plea to GEDMatch’s founder, Curtis Rogers, for access to the database. The police, aided by Parabon and companies like it, made new arrests weekly.īut the Utah case was not a murder or a sexual assault - and so was not covered by the website’s disclaimer. At the time, GEDMatch allowed law-enforcement agencies access to the profiles to help solve murders and sexual assaults, unless users specifically opted out. Genealogists at Parabon had been generating leads by sifting through a database of DNA tests called GEDMatch, a free-to-use website that allows users to upload test results in the hope of finding long-lost relatives. The Utah case generated public backlash because of concerns over privacy. The company had made its name by comparing suspects’ DNA to profiles on genealogy databases and piecing together family trees to track down alleged offenders.īut then controversy erupted over a case Parabon helped to solve, in which a teenage boy had violently assaulted a septuagenarian in a Mormon meeting house in Utah. CHIRASHI MR.7 IN WALNUT CRACKFrom its headquarters in Reston, Virginia, Parabon was helping police to crack cold-crime cases almost weekly, such as the murder of a Canadian couple in 1987 and the case of a young woman who was sexually assaulted and killed in the 1960s. At the time, it was the most famous forensic-genetics company on the planet. It was May 2019 when Parabon Nanolabs ran into a major controversy.
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