Paul Ellenbogen will present his Pre-FPO, "Long range familial searches of genetic databases: New techniques and policy implications" on Tuesday, September 17, 2019 in CS 402 at 2:30pm. The members of his committee are as follows: Arvind Narayanan (adviser), Ed Felten, Jonathan Mayer, Mona Singh, and Olga Troyanskaya. Everyone is invited to attend his talk. The talk title and abstract follow below. "Long range familial searches of genetic databases: New techniques and policy implications" Abstract: Consumer genetics databases hold dense genotypes of millions of people, and the number is growing quickly. In 2018, law enforcement agencies began using such databases to identify anonymous DNA via long-range familial searches. I show that this technique is far more powerful if combined with a genealogical database of the type collected by online ancestry services. I present a “genealogical triangulation” algorithm and study its effectiveness on simulated datasets. I show that for over 50% of targets, their anonymous DNA can be identified (matched to the correct individual or same-sex sibling) when the genetic database includes just 1% of the population. I also show the effectiveness of “snowball identification'” in which a successful identification adds to the genetic genealogical database, increasing the identification accuracy for future instances. I next turn to the policy implications of recent advances in familial searches, including the novel technique that I developed. I compare commercial databases to existing law enforcement databases. The existence of commercial databases and new familial searching requires new regulations. I argue for warrant requirements for law enforcement use of familial search against commercial databases. I also argue that websites that allow for user uploads must cryptographically verify the authenticity of those uploads to prevent re identification attacks.