Privacy fear for DNA dragnet

A district court judge who is a world expert in forensic DNA has called for a public debate on the use of familial DNA testing, as police reveal they have now used the "last resort" method 38 times.

Judge Arthur Tompkins, an honorary member of Interpol's DNA monitoring expert group, says there needs to be a debate about the technique - which involves crime-scene samples being compared to the national DNA databank to search for relatives of an offender - before the technique becomes even more widespread.

"The effect of it is to increase the footprint of the database without Parliament having legislated for that increased footprint," the Hamilton-based judge said.

Critics of the technique say it raises serious privacy issues and has the potential to subject entire families to "life-long genetic surveillance". It has been banned in parts of the US, where the Columbia Law Review says the practice is not "racially neutral" and has a disproportionate impact on minorities.

Police national headquarters released figures to the Sunday Star-Times showing that they have asked Environmental Science & Research (ESR) to search the DNA database for partial, familial matches on 38 occasions.

But the strike rate has been low - as a result of familial searches there were only two people convicted.

Police say the method is used only as a last resort when all other lines of inquiry have been exhausted.

Tompkins said familial testing raised many issues of privacy and ethics. "It means that you have to worry about not only what you're doing, but also what your brother and uncle and father and children do. It means that people become involved in a police investigation solely on the basis of the genetic link."

The procedure could also cause conflict within families, revealing previously unknown relationships.

Tompkins said different jurisdictions treated the technology differently - it was banned in Canada and parts of the US but used without restriction in the UK.

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Privacy fear for DNA dragnet