Essay One - Draft

The arrest of 75-year-old Joseph DeAngelo Jr., better known as the Golden State Killer, sent shock waves through the media in 2018. The shock was not from finally catching the killer, but instead the method used to catch them. Using DNA collected from a rape kit performed on one of the victims, police set up a profile on the websites FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage allowing access to the DNA databases for the companies and enabling them to find matches for the DNA and find relatives. Using a relative identified on the sites, police built a family tree of and determined who the Golden State Killer was despite none of the relatives even being alerted to this fact. At first this seems like a good idea as it allows for cold cases to be solved and regular old cases to be easier in solving but it is also important to consider the room for error and lack of transparency in such a case. The sites privacy policy stated that it would allow law enforcement access to the database in one case, but the other site explicitly stated it would not, an action that is legally and morally wrong. Despite this, the police gained access without a warrant and the specifics were hidden until much later, after the trial concluded.

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