The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected the DNA profiles of 21.7 million people. Ken Klippenstein reports that 7 percent of the U.S. population is already pwnd, that they're collecting 90,000 more a month–though these are mostly immigrants–and that the Bureau wants to double its budget for further expansion of the DNA catalog.
The staggering increases are raising questions among civil liberties advocates.
"When we're talking about rapid expansion like this, it's getting us ever closer to a universal DNA database," Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in genetic privacy, told The Intercept. "I think the civil liberties implications here are significant."The rapid growth of the FBI's sample load is in large part thanks to a Trump-era rule change that mandated the collection of DNA from migrants who were arrested or detained by immigration authorities.
Remember that if they have the DNA profile of closely-related family members, they have also drunk your milkshake to forensically- and legally-relevant standards. 7% is surely enough to ID most of the rest of us to investigators (or insurance actuaries) by frequency analysis, even if it's no good for court. Using 23 and Me and other geneaology services has the same pitfalls, and they share it all with the cops on rubber-stamp warrants.
