Nearly 10 years ago, Curtis Rogers and John Olson founded GEDmatch, a website for amateur and professional researchers and genealogists with the main goal of connecting relatives, especially adoptees and birth parents. At the time, there was no way for Rogers to know their online service, which began as a hobby, would help solve one of the most infamous cold cases in U.S. history, nor that it would then become the standard database utilized by law enforcement to solve more than 70 additional cold cases.
So when Verogen, a spin-off company from Illumina dedicated to providing NGS solutions for law enforcement and forensic DNA labs, announced their acquisition of GEDmatch last week, it wasn’t a surprise. Despite their best efforts, Rogers, Olson and a team of five volunteers do not herald the resources of Verogen, which has a $3.3 billion parent company behind it.
According to Colleen Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogical consultant and founder of Identifinders International and the DNA Doe Project, the acquisition of GEDmatch was met with “alarm, suspicion, and hope” within the genealogical community.
“We have experienced so many upheavals in recent months that many members of the community are nervous about the future of GEDmatch and genetic genealogy in general,” said Fitzpatrick. “Yet, we all hope things will stabilize and we can continue to use GEDmatch without further disruptions in service.”
Verogen CEO Brett Williams told Forensic that is exactly what he plans to do. “The main difference will be the Verogen name and company behind GEDmatch. As we go forward, we are going to invest in the site, make the frontend more attractive and consumer-friendly. We will also improve the tools available to the genealogy community. We want to be able to manage within the terms of use.”
And that is the key. As this acquisition plays out, the “terms of use” will become infinitely important for all stakeholders.
Prior problems for GEDmatch
Initially, Rogers made the GEDmatch database available to law enforcement investigating only homicides and/or sexual assaults. In May, that rule was bent when Utah officers used the database to identify the perpetrator of a violent assault. In response, Rogers and Olsen changed GEDmatch’s terms and conditions to require customers to explicitly “opt-in” for searching by law enforcement. However, that was not the end of it. Just last month, a Florida detective obtained a search warrant for the entirety of GEDmatch—including those who had not opted in. GEDmatch complied.
Now, with Verogen behind the database, that doesn’t seem likely to happen again.
“There are a bunch of people who do not want to have law enforcement search their profile, and that is a distinction we are going to make,” Williams said. “Any approach trying to get around that will be taken seriously by us. That’s not to say we are anti-law enforcement. Of course, we’re not. We’re looking to work with them to ensure they operate within the spirit of the way we are encouraging people to use GEDmatch.”
Another issue Verogen has already solved—hacking concerns. Just last month, a team of genetic security researchers revealed a flaw in GEDmatch’s relative-matching algorithm that would allow a hacker to scrape more than 90 percent of users’ DNA data. Williams said Verogen has already addressed those security issues—even if some of the claims were “reaching”—and is committed to monitoring/correcting any other security flaws.
Business model
While some are concerned about Verogen serving both the genealogy community as well as forensic labs and law enforcement, Fitzpatrick believes there are many ways Verogen can do both, while ensuring privacy is afforded.
“Specifically, they can do this by allowing genetic genealogists free uploads to GEDmatch, access to low-cost Tier 1 tools, and the ability to opt-out to law enforcement as we desire. They can support the development of new tools, increase security against hacking and junk-data uploads, and very importantly, offer legal protection against future search warrants.”
At this time, Williams said he will not be increasing the low price of GEDmatch, which has multiple price tiers and features. In fact, he said he doesn’t imagine the company having to hike the price in the future, either, as “it’s not our business model to extract every dollar we can out of genealogists using the database.”
What is at the core of Verogen’s business is next-generation sequencing instrumentation, reagents and services/solutions that utilize genomic and mitochondrial DNA to address the most common challenges for casework and missing persons sample analysis. GEDmatch was attractive to Verogen because it’s one small piece of the overall puzzle. For example, in the U.S. today, there are no operational forensic labs doing genealogy testing for law enforcement; everything is outsourced. That’s what Verogen wants to change.
“For law enforcement, [the opt-in] portion ofGEDmatch is only one part of what would be a product offering,” Williams explained. “We will offer an end-to-end solution for genealogy testing using sequencing technology. We will add a portal where police can register, understand the process, and operate appropriately within the terms of service. GEDmatch is going to be part of a broader turnkey solution for law enforcement.”
GEDmatch’s database currently has more than 1.3 million customer profiles and is gaining as many as 1,000 new users per day. About 200,000 of those have chosen to opt-in for law enforcement searching, and Williams says about 1,000 people are opting-in every day, which is a mix of new and existing customers.
“There will not be massive changes to GEDmatch,” Williams said. “We will make the frontend of this consumer genealogy database as vibrant and successful as possible. There is always going to be a portion of people that will sign up for law enforcement searching and a portion that will not. Given that number and our capabilities on the frontend, I’m confident the law enforcement part will take care of itself. We are not going to force people to opt-in. We’re going to improve GEDmatch, and the whole thing will just work.”