Christine Jessop’s killer identified: Solved cold case raises questions about genetic privacy
By Julia Creet,
The Conversation
| 10. 22. 2020
On Oct. 15, Toronto police announced that they had finally solved the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop using DNA evidence and genetic genealogy websites. Identifying Calvin Hoover as Jessop’s killer has provided immense relief to the family and those close to the case, and in particular to Guy Paul Morin, who was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated after serving 18 months in prison.
The announcement highlights a conundrum: at risk is the genetic privacy of everyone who has uploaded — and, mostly, not uploaded — a DNA sample to a commercial genealogy site.
Genealogists never anticipated that their benign but passionate interest in tracking relations through records and DNA would ever lead to law enforcement’s most potent cold case tool kit. In 2018, public awareness of law enforcement’s mining of genetic genealogy came to light with the 2018 identification of the Golden State Killer. The identification of Joseph James DeAngelo relied on freely uploaded DNA results alongside painstaking genealogical research.
Data industry
Since then, law enforcement’s mining of genealogical data has become an industry in itself, with hundreds... see more
Related Articles
The last couple of weeks have given us some remarkable stories – ludicrous, thought-provoking or both – from around the world. Some of these takes are so scorching hot that they self-combust.
For instance, it has recently been proved, or demonstrated, or at least asserted, that women can benefit from hanging around powerful men. Hey, it must be scientificalish, it was published in Nature Communications (on November 17, with open access), under this title:
The association between early career informal...
By Katie Mettler, Washington Post | 11.19.2020
Prince George’s County is one of 10 jurisdictions across the country that will receive a $470,000 grant from the Justice Department to reopen cold cases using forensic genetic genealogy — a new investigative technique that draws on privately curated DNA...
By Erik Parens, Aeon | 11.10.2020
Over the past decade, economists, sociologists and psychologists have begun collaborating with geneticists to investigate how genomic differences among human beings are linked to differences in their behaviours and social outcomes. The insights sought are wide-ranging: why do some of...
By Jeffrey Mervis, Science | 11.09.2020
An advocate for using IQ tests to select who is allowed to legally immigrate to the United States has been given a high-ranking position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
ScienceInsider has learned that Jason Richwine,...
