Australia’s police linking DNA with ancestry could be a privacy nightmare

The Australian Federal Police recently announced plans to use DNA samples collected at crime scenes to make predictions about potential suspects. This technology, called forensic “DNA phenotyping”, can reveal a surprising and growing amount of highly personal information from the traces of DNA that we all leave behind, everywhere we go – including information about our gender, ancestry, and appearance. Queensland police have already used versions of this approach to identify a suspect and identify remains. Forensic services in Queensland and New South Wales have also investigated the use of predictive DNA. This technology can reveal much more about a…

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