Readers React: DNA firms can misuse data in multiple ways. Helping to catch a suspected killer isn’t one of them

To the editor: Having retired after working at Kaiser Permanente for 20 years doing genetic testing, I was immediately skeptical of the various for-profit companies that charge to have a person’s DNA sequenced and thus reveal their ancestry. (“Privacy, schmivacy. Police were right to use a commercial DNA database in the Golden State Killer case,” May 2)

I also strongly suspected the clients’ results were being sold or otherwise used for all sorts of purposes. So I read the online privacy statements of both 23andme and Ancestry.com, where my suspicions were confirmed in spades.

People who pay to have their DNA sequenced give up any right to determine or control what is done with that information. The “privacy” statements use paragraphs of legalese to disguise the fact that there is actually almost no protection for the clients’ most intimate, personal information.

Considering what could be done with the data, the possibility of my DNA helping to discover that one of my third cousins twice-removed may be a heinous criminal sounds great to me.

Margaret Parkhurst, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I find it ironic that Cyrus Farivar’s op-ed article on surveillance was accompanied on the facing page by three letters celebrating the use of a scan of millions of people’s DNA to arrest a man in connection with the Golden State Killer homicides and rapes.

What Farivar understands, but most citizens do not, is that these methods would not be problematic if they were limited to such egregious cases and such clear-cut evidence. But when misapplied, these searches inevitably will lead to the arrest of innocent parties, who then will be forced to spend thousands of dollars defending themselves against sloppy science and lazy police work.

We must institute controls to ensure that modern technology is used carefully, rather than vacuuming up our every action. Otherwise we risk finding ourselves jailed for a distant relative’s littering.

Geoff Kuenning, Claremont

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