As a reporter, Republican Dave Reichert pushed for DNA technology that would enable mass testing.

Gubernatorial hopeful and Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., is really looking for people knowing that Rapid DNA, a technology that generates DNA profiles of people based on oral histories, is the future of law enforcement. A former sheriff who spent some of his post-Congress years advocating for the company that dominates the Rapid DNA industry, Reichert continues to advocate for its use in police departments in Washington and around the country, despite criticism that the technology it helps the government to monitor more. that its apparent flaws can lead to innocent people being caught for crimes they did not commit.

“It’s good for crime solving, and tracking down suspects,” he said in an interview last year, referring to Rapid DNA. “And we’re using this technology at the border a lot more in the Trump era than we do now, obviously.”

Law enforcement says DNA-storage technology is a tool that helps generate investigative results, locate suspects, and solve various crimes. But there are also imperfections that lead to wrongful arrests and convictions. In 2017, the Swedish National Forensic Institute tested the Rapid DNA machine and found that 36% of the tests had errors involving two or more samples, only 77% of the samples match their DNA profile perfectly.

Another study, conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, showed that Rapid DNA machines were successful 85% of the time without human supervision, a rate that rose to 90% when experts supervised the process. this one. Although the FBI and other well-funded agencies enforce education and training requirements for their forensics personnel, local agency standards are more inconsistent, with supervisors sometimes making horrendous mistakes or they are committing an obvious fraud.

“We should all be concerned when we hear about unproven technologies like Rapid DNA being promoted for criminal justice purposes, especially given the limited protections currently in place for DNA collection in America. tests ,” Hudson Hongo, a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Salon.

In addition, some critics of Rapid DNA have warned that by analyzing unique data that reveals important medical information, the technology is a violation of privacy and civil liberties.

“Rapid DNA machines enable this information to be stored in large government DNA databases, raising concerns about privacy, security and misuse,” said Tee Sannon, director of technology policy for the ACLU. -WA. “This technology is likely to exacerbate existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system, as people of color are more likely to have their DNA collected and seized.”

Reichert’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But the candidate’s support for Rapid DNA is in line with the broader message of his “tough on crime” campaign, which also calls for more police on the streets. He is also placed in a unique position among hardened criminals because of his history of advocating technology for the firm he worked for.

After leaving the House in 2019, Reichert joined the lobbying firm of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs as a vice president, where his sole client was Thermo Fisher Scientific, a research company of science and medicine which together with ANDE has full control over billions of dollars. The Rapid DNA industry in the United States and lobbied for legislation to integrate the technology with the FBI’s operations. Reichert, Rapid DNA’s spokesman on both sides of the revolving door between politics and lobbying, will represent a direct link between that industry and the office he seeks to hold.

According to public records, Thermo Fisher Scientific contributed $360,000 to Reichert’s employer from 2021 to 2023; he was one of three promoters working on behalf of the manufacturer of Rapid DNA.

The Seattle Times reported that Reichert’s role was to work with government officials and use his 33 years of law enforcement experience to create a legal framework to facilitate the collection of children’s DNA. lost in Central America. Reichert encouraged his efforts to use Rapid DNA machines in this project.

“I worked one day after I left Congress, I was working in Central America in human trafficking. And part of my job was working with technology that a new one called Rapid DNA with sheriffs and police chiefs across the country; and it’s a machine the size of a microwave, and you can get a DNA profile in 90 minutes,” he said.

Reichert said in interviews across Washington state that he served as a corporate representative on a federally funded project at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, which uses DNA technology to prevent human trafficking in Central America. The project seeks to help Central American countries create DNA databases of family members of known missing children, which can be shared with US authorities to verify the identities of children who appear at the border.

After being paid to advocate its use in Central America, Reichert continued to develop the technology at home. “I’m back at work, helping local law enforcement across the country find” Rapid DNA, he told the E for Explicit podcast in 2022.

Reichert emphasized that Rapid DNA is the tool that law enforcement needs to change things in the country, according to his campaign website, “a place of crime, drugs, homelessness, human trafficking and other problems of profound.” Although Reichert often cites his work in Central America as the eye-opening experience that led him to this belief, he has never mentioned the fact that he was paid to advocate for its use in the first place.