I'll give it a chance. This is kind of interesting. Your dna is probably already in a database. You didn't have to provide a sample or give consent, but the unique sequence of a's t's, g's and c's that make you you are searchable.

Nonetheless. So if you committed a heinous crime and left a bit of your dna law enforcement could search it in a database and identify you. This video includes a discussion of serious crimes which may be disturbing for some viewers, so i wanted to let you know that up front, but i think it's necessary to talk about these crimes in some detail, for reasons that will become apparent. Can you stand up? Why is any toes in there in the small town of visalia california, in the mid-1970s one of the state's most prolific criminals got his start.

He repeatedly broke into houses and stole small items like cash coins and jewelry. He was dubbed the visalia ransacker, but soon his crimes escalated uh-oh, six months later in 1976, he moves up to sacramento and over the course of the next three years, is moving all across northern california committing numerous sexual assaults over 50 sexual assaults. Here he was called the east area rapist, the police are saying lock up, tight, sacramento's infamous east area, rapist may still be, and then in 1979 he moves down to southern california, starting in santa barbara and starts killing, and he was known as the original night stalker. In southern california, variously known as the east area rapist and the original night stalker, these were brutal meticulously planned crimes that spanned numerous california.

Between 1976 and 1986. police believed that all of these crimes were committed by the same person now known as the golden state killer. How was it known that these were committed by the same person? Investigators were relying on mo mo modus operandi, is basically how a criminal will commit a crime. I was wearing some type of a mask or a hood.

I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The golden state killer had a very distinctive m.o. What he would do is he would break into a house with a gun, a house with a man and a woman. He would tie them up and tell the man i'm gon na put plates on your back.

If i hear those plates move, i'm going to kill your wife and then kill you take the wife into another room and sexually assault her. Then he would go through this. I had no toast, however, much time eating stealing stuff, stealing little things or whatever eating, and then he would leave. How was he not caught based on fingerprint evidence? Well, he didn't leave his fingerprints.

He always wore a mask. He always had gloves on. This. Was an offender that did everything to prevent himself from being caught? The golden state killer has been linked to at least 12 murders, 50 rapes and a string of burglaries throughout california.

Jesus how's it going how you doing good good. So we supply dna sequencing solutions to the forensic laboratories that process crime scene dna at a crime scene, there's typically less than a nanogram of dna left and it's usually degraded right. So it breaks down. Why is there so little at a crime scene, a nanogram? Yes, that's insane! Yes, there's no accident that he stops in 1986.

1986 is when the first dna case was a little weird. I agree and he's i think, he's following that and he's saying you know what what i'm doing here, yeah i'm just leaving cause. I'm not gon na comment on this. If you i didn't feel like, if i'm gon na run an interview, i don't know, maybe a tripod, but you guys it just feels weird like a oh.

That's a cool story. Tell me about it: yeah! Okay, that's pretty good. Tell me more about this, i i don't know man. I can't do this anymore investigator paul holes tracked the golden state killer for decades.

He couldn't account for dna technology, and that really was his big mistake. That was the critical mistake. He left his dna all over california and turns out that three of the cases i had three sexual assault kits and that's where i got the golden state killer's dna from northern california, but having the unknown killer's dna wasn't enough. They needed to match it to wait.

Guys is this: is that dna with unknowns? This is cgi right. In 1990, the fbi started work on what would become a national genetic database. It mainly stores dna profiles from convicted criminals and persons of interest. It's called the combined dna index system or codis.

For short. In each of your cells, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes, one from your mom and one from your dad and at particular places on some chromosomes. There are short sections of dna that repeat like aatg, aatg, aatg and so on. These are called short tandem, repeats or strs, and different people have different numbers of repeats.

Forensic labs produce str profiles by counting up the number of repeats at each location. Initially, there were only 13 places on the dna where strs were counted, but in 2017 that was expanded to 20.. It feels to me like that. That's not uh information, but the chances of two people having the exact same number of repeats at all locations is.

The codis database now contains over 18 million str profiles. Golden state killer's dna profile has been up at the national dna database. That's run by the fbi. Codis since 2001, and has been searching ever since with no hits we did interpol searching, trying to search other countries.

Dna databases thinking well, maybe came from out of the country. That's why, after all this time, this is interesting able to identify him and obviously we didn't get any hits, but genetic sequencing technology was advancing rapidly. The human genome project was completed since 1986. Scientists wrapping and sequencing the three billion nucleotides contained in the human genome.

It's anticipated soon. Private companies began offering genetic tests directly to consumers and they provide far more what about one of those. What's in the codis database, i traveled to houston texas to visit family tree dna headquarters. I want don't.

I guess i've always wondered. What am i and we'll start talking about the life cycle of a sample there? You go. Thank you, these samples. What are they so they're cheek cells? They just scrape the inside of their cheek, they put a cap on and they send it back to us.

It's like a robot ballet, yes, so for dna extraction, we need to remove all of the protections that are on the dna and just separate it by itself. So we can do testing on that. Instead of looking at 20 places on your dna, these tests examine 700 to 800 thousand. The family finder test is based on, what's called a microarray, and this is what a is microbial.

Each one of those boxes is an individual. We can fit 24 individuals on here and within that box is about 710 000 positions of your dna that we're measuring we're getting data for 710, 000. Yes and they're called snips. So, hang on: that's like 710 000 individual bases like atgc.

Yes for each person, you can measure 24 on that single chip. Correct the human genome consists of 3 billion bases. All people share about 99.9 percent, the exact same dna, which means on average only about three million bases differ from. I want to know that okay, i'll just keep one person these individual letter changes are known as single nucleotide, polymorphisms or snips.

So on there are there a whole bunch of like little pieces of dna. Then yes, so what we have is a short piece of dna that is specific to one snip, so it's one. So is that in the genome, where we know there can be a difference. Okay, is there any example of a simple snip that you know confers some sort of actually blue eyes? Is a single base change really yeah, so everyone with blue eyes, has this one letter change.

You can see now it's starting to scan the first box. The results of your 710 thousand snips can tell you about your geographic ancestry or possible medical conditions. I want to take a test like this. I think it'd be kind of good and they'd be cool.

Content too. Is i want. I want to know more man. You can also quantify how related you are to someone else.

The genetics of having a kid are a bit like cutting two decks of cards together. The resulting deck will share about half its cards with each parent and there will be long sequences of cards it'll be it would be 50 successful. 20 percent hot 50 fashionable uh five. Five percent charisma - all that, but i wan na know like more like where i'm from and well not, which match that's what i'm really looking for sequences in each parent now, if this deck has a kid well, then its offspring will share only about a quarter of Its cards with each grandparent and the sections of identical cards will be shorter, and this is how it works with dna.

The more closely you're related to someone, the more dna you share and the longer the blocks of identical dna are but to compare the dna of two people. You don't need to read every letter. The snips are sprinkled throughout the dna, roughly every 2000 bases. So if you find long sections where the snips match up, you can bet that the dna in between is identical too, by comparing hundreds of thousands of snips sprinkled throughout the dna.

You can see where these identical blocks start and stop, and so how much total dna is shared everywhere. That is highlighted in blue is where i share dna with your body with my father, which is exactly what you expect, because i should share dna with him everywhere, because he gave me 50 of my dna. So this is the second to third cousin. I have no idea who this person is, and you can see here.

We are definitely not as closely related as me and my dad, because, where the blue is those are the only regions of the chromosome where we share dna, we all know that these genetic tests can help identify our relatives. But the question is: can you do the same thing with law enforcement databases? Can you identify family members using the codis database? You can and it's only limited to really first order and second order, relatives. That means, if i'm looking for the golden state killer, i'm looking for either his father, his brother or his son. We did that over and over and over again with no hits.

Why is it so limited because you've only got 23 loci? If you want to do proper kinship analysis, you need to have more points assessed on that genome to see how related you really are. We know the answer is behind a locked door and the answer is behind the locked door of 23andme in ancestry.com. We know that they have hunger, family name, but never knew you actually are half hungarian d todd yeah. I don't speak hungarians.

Just my my grandfather say anything in hungarian. Please! Oh no related to him. A second cousin, i would guess, would be in there sure, and that was that was very hard to deal with. You know that the answer is there behind this locked door, law enforcement is not allowed to search the databases of 23andme and ancestry.com, but luckily for investigators.

There was another way: oh, an independent website called gedmatch, had been set up to allow people to connect with relatives. You can upload the raw data from any of the big genetic testing companies and search for matches. So when we initially search the ged match database, our best hits come back at third cousins, which means they shared. You know our top hit, i think shared about one percent of the dna technically one day be allowed to like look at a database.

Look at some guy and like send like a personal investigator and wait for or wait for him to do like a mistake or they can arrest him right. Like. Oh, oh, look. He stopped at a stoplight! Oh my god! Uh this! Oh! Oh! Damn! I just so happened to arrest you and i have to book you.

Oh damn, look. The dna matches hey it's very little dna. That's shared no, but that's a starting data point and theoretically by taking multiple of these individuals that share dna and building their family trees. Using traditional genealogy and public source documents like census, records and obituaries and newspaper articles and and find a grave.com, you build this family tree back until you get two of these relatives or the golden state killer, you get them to intersect.

Where now you see oh they've got they share great great grandparents together. Theoretically, golden state killer is a descendant from those same great great grandparents. So once i identify that common ancestor, it's now identifying every single descendant from those great great, and this becomes a huge process. People in the 1840s would typically have 15 kids.

You have to identify each of those kids and then all of their children and then all of their children. So now we have this exponentially growing families jesus. How wide did that tree get? I think we had over a thousand individuals in that family tree. Wasn't that bad, but we knew a lot about our offender.

We were confident it was bored between 1940 and 1960.. We knew he was a white male. We knew he was five eight to five ten. You know he's in california he's up in sacramento in 1976, he's in southern california in the 80s.

We basically narrowed it down to about five males and then it's just investigations with a suspect at their fingertips. This spring they followed him to a sacramento area. Hobby lobby store and took a dna sample from his car door. Handle days later.

Investigators recovered another dna sample from one discarded tissue which registered a match to dna evidence left at one of the crime scenes. Investigators in california, say, dna evidence led them to one of these notorious serial killers. Former police officer, joseph james deangelo, was arrested yesterday and he is believed to be the so-called golden state killer for 44 years. Countless investigators have worked it and have failed to solve it.

Within four and a half months, a team of six were able to figure out who the golden state killer was, and that was joseph d'angelo. After the golden state killer was identified, the floodgates opened wait and we were seeing that everybody busted not only single killers, but multiple killers serial killers every week were being identified from cases in the 70s and 80s because there's been over 70 cases now the more that The more people have access to plug-in public information about people right, they won't need it. They think they won't need, like teams like really hardware investigators they get, they could have a system really do on its own. This way right and they continue to solve them at a fairly regular rate and - and i think, presumably, that rate's just going to increase yeah and there's going to be more because it's working and we are going to you - know, help find these people.

But the scary thing is in the u.s: you have a hundred thousand cold case murders with dna. You have more coal cases, but the ones with dna is estimated about a hundred thousand there's roughly about 650 000 sexual assaults with dna. This seems like a real paradigm shift. It is multiple law enforcement agencies have said that this is the most revolutionary tool since the adoption of the fingerprint with traditional dna, it required getting a sample from the actual individual, it's a one-to-one type of process, and so these these offenders, who let's say they have Committed crimes and haven't been caught and they're just living their life and they're thinking.

Well. My dna has never been taken from me, so they may. I may have left dna in the case that i committed back in 1975, but they've never gotten my dna. They won't find me but now well, we don't have to rely upon that.

Somebody distantly related to that offender has put their dna into a database and they have to start getting nervous because that's outside of their control. They can't account for a third cousin. What that? Third cousin is doing, and so they start getting nervous and i've kind of wondered how many of these individuals recognize that law enforcement is eventually going to be knocking on their door as a result of a third cousin putting their dna in the database. Each person who uploads their information to a database, they know illuminates the identities of hundreds of other people around them: parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins.

A study by ancestry, dna found average person chat. What if, when you were born, you got a fingerprint and a dna sample right, and it was all put in that in the uk has 175 third cousins and it doesn't stop there. The dna in one person will be shared by hundreds of people yet to be born children, grandchildren, who said like cattle, pac-man, nieces and nephews and cousins once or twice removed. Realistically, each person shares identifiable dna with nearly a thousand people past and future, so it doesn't take many people uploading their data to reveal the identities of everyone living in a country back in 20 years.

Wait wait guys i'm interested, but it's okay, i'm sorry for pausing, but people say it's invasive. But what is the downside? I'm just wondering what is i'm trying to learn? What is a problem with what with them, having? Let's say your dna whatever? What is something that you that people are afraid? Because i don't know we have a privacy of what, because privacy of what dean a study found that using an existing database of just one privacy of getting of getting caught. If you do a crime, isn't that what you want, though, that people will get caught for doing crimes, 1.3 million people, they could identify 60 of all americans of european descent and they estimated with a database containing just 2 percent of the population. You could find a third cousin or closer match in 99 percent of cases.

Dna storage is one of the things that we have. That is really unlike anything else. If you look inside, this is at minus 20 degrees celsius that keeps the dna good for a long time. We have dna samples in here that are probably about 15 years old, how many samples are stored in there just over 2 million wow yeah.

So the capacity is just over two million two million people's dna stored in this one small room, correct hope, you're doing fine. Wow doing what you're doing next 2021, over 30 million people worldwide have taken directly. Okay, i understand i understand the concerns now answer the concerns. You were saying what, if your employer learned, that one of your relatives or one of your cousins and somebody who did something really bad and then you get denied a job because you're closely related to somebody and they want to deal with the possible fallouts.

I understand i could see that as a problem to consumer genetic tests, the majority of which are through ancestry and 23andme, which do not currently work with law enforcement but family. What that's not the issue? Okay, what is issued only tree dna does, if you ask americans, should we have a national database where everyone's logged in it yeah by their dna? Most americans will be somewhat uncomfortable or potentially very uncomfortable with that, but we're kind of sleepwalking into that scenario. There are some people who are concerned with privacy if anyone chooses or decides that they do not want their results to be used for law enforcement matching they can remove themselves from that. I do worry about genetic information being used to discriminate against someone.

My biggest thing is health insurance. I worry about if you have somebody's dna profile deleting and some laws and access, that's at the wrong hands and then there's been like this isn't: 19 6 anymore dude. I don't think they're searching as deleting this person has a proclivity they're headed towards parts and then rate skyrocket. That's the biggest place that i see as a privacy concern once your genetic information is out there.

It's out there, it's not like a credit card where you can get a new one, yeah you're, giving away something that you don't know what it can do. Well, yeah our information isn't ours in the first place, like our information, what did the guys say? I wasn't this thing: concern rates, skyrocket, parkinson's, they're, headed this person has a proclivity they're, headed towards parkinson's they're, headed towards this towards that and then rates skyrocket, that's the biggest place that i see more and it's i worry about. If you have somebody's dna profile and some laws enacted gets in the wrong hands and they say that this person has a proclivity they're, headed towards them, because they're headed towards this uh towards that and then rates skyrocket, that's the biggest place, oh insurance as a privacy Concern, oh, that's your genetic information's out. I understand now what it can do.

Well, yeah our information isn't ours in the first place like right, our information is shared. Yes, with your relatives, yes, and although you may be adverse to this sort of thing, if they've already done it in society today, you very clearly have two camps. There are those that are very comfortable having their genome available to be able to be searched for law enforcement purposes, and there are others that are not comfortable at all and that's okay. The problem is, of course, those people who don't want theirs to be searchable could have their dna uploaded inadvertently by their relatives.

Do you know what i mean so like? If, if i don't want my dna to be searchable by law enforcement, but my sister uploads hers? Yes, almost as good as me doing it myself right now, family tree dna's policy is, we will only accept samples from laundry and now is a search under certain circumstances. It has to be a sexual assault. Identification of remains dna recovered from the scene of a homicide and we also do child abductions. So if there's a child, that's kidnapped and there's dna evidence, we will process the dna, so they can try to find out who the abductor is.

Those are the only cases that we will accept got it. Unfortunately, now gedmatch has flipped off the switch, and jet matches actually said that you're not allowed to have your information searched without opting in right was that decision by jed match a direct result of this golden state killer case? No, it wasn't tell the story, you know it. It had to do with a utah case where an elderly woman was playing the organ in a church and there was an individual who broke in and assaulted her, but it wasn't a sexual assault, but it's a serious crime. I think believe tried to strangle her and left her for dead.

I believe he thought that you know she was obviously dead and left the police, i believe, approached jed match, because that they were concerned that he was going to recommit other crimes. But jed match's terms of service said they would only help law enforcement in cases of rape or homicide. Her problem was that she didn't die because if she died, then, if she died, it would have fit the conditions and they would have uploaded the sample because it met the terms of service and so what happened? They didn't they didn't take that case they did they. Subsequently, caught the individual from that from that search that they performed on jet match, but people within the genealogy world kind of got their their passions in flames, saying that is stepping outside of what this tool should be used for, and they ended up putting a lot Of pressure on gen match they flipped the switch because they got freaked out, but at the end of the day it was a violence though, and i think ultimately led to a good thing.

Everybody got zeroed out and then everybody gets to sign back in subsequently jed match was sold to veragen. I can tell you a new user today when they sign up for gedmatch, about 73 of them are signing up to allow law enforcement to search we're pretty happy with that yeah i mean that's, that's a high number, it's a high number and it suggests that people Want that, in a sense how many second cousins or third cousins do you know you know what i mean you don't know that many of them without each other you're helping justice, you're helping a victim's family, get a little bit of peace, not closure, but a little Bit of peace, partly you can make an argument that if you want to be an activist helping catch criminals, one of the best things you can do is like encourage everyone. You know to be tested and put in the database correct, and you know there are millions of people who have tested at other companies that are not working with law enforcement and if they want to help, all they have to do is download their raw data and They can upload it for free into our database. Why? Absolutely? What? If you sign up - and you send to somebody else's dinner, but i also absolutely believe - and you wouldn't do it murdered or sexually assaulted.

It would be part. You know having violent crimes committed against us. There has to be an equal balance that scale of my privacy has been taken because of a third cousin has been identified versus a mother. Who's talking about her daughter has been murdered.

That's scary! That's illegal! It's way the hell like this minute. What just i mean doing crimes are illegal too. That's at a point now. Why do you think somebody who's going to do a robbery or or a kill, is above sending the wrong information? In many ways, technology has kind of outstripped where the laws are.

I truly believe that, ultimately, this this tool and and the all the concerns with it, will probably end up in front of the nation's supreme court, and there will be a decision. My bottom line message: if you're going to make a decision, if there's going to be laws restricting law enforcement to use, it make sure that you're making an informed decision and not assuming what it is based on its dna and genetics and law enforcement, though it really Isn't what you think it is? I got to keep a couple million people happy so that i have access to the identities kind of in a sense, in a sense right of millions, hundreds of millions of people right right, that's and that's a pretty selective sample. These are people who are willing. Okay, yes, guys.

That was a video, because i enjoyed it because it was pretty much over at this point, what's wrong with the genetics of law commission, because it really isn't what you think it is. I got to keep a couple million people happy so that i have access to the identities kind of in a sense, in a sense right of millions, hundreds of millions of people right right and that's a pretty selective sample. These are people who are willing to give up their information to find their ancestors. There may be many others who are militantly private, but they don't get a say in in the decision of whether they're going to be searchable through that person or not true, that's the choice you make so that to me, that's the choice.

You don't make it's a choice, you don't make, but it's also it's the choice we have to make as a society is. What's that balance, there is always going to be winners and losers in my mind, right and i don't want to use losers in the in the negative sense there, but in a decision at the end of the day, you have to balance in my mind, the public Safety with the public privacy is duck. Duck go is that is that good? I use it, i'm a little paranoid. So it's supposed to not track you as much as much, i guess, but um yeah.

What okay? I have been working on this video for a couple of years, so i really want to thank brilliant for sponsoring it. I appreciate their willingness to support me tackling complex and important stories. Okay, guys guys guys, i don't know what we're doing to the chat, but first off i'm doing bullets. Give me.