As a lobbyist, Republican Dave Reichert pushed DNA technology that could enable mass surveillance

Gubernatorial hopeful and former Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., really wants people to know that Rapid DNA, a technology which creates DNA profiles of individuals based on a mouth swab, is the future of law enforcement. A former sheriff who spent some of his post-Congress years lobbying for a company that dominates the Rapid DNA industry, Reichert is still advocating for its use in police departments in Washington and across the country, despite criticism that the technology enables government mass surveillance and that its apparent flaws could lead to innocent people being arrested for crimes they did not commit.

"So good for crime solving, and tracking suspects," he said in an interview last year, referring to Rapid DNA. "And we've also been using this technology on the border a lot more during the Trump era than we do now, obviously.”

Law enforcement has touted DNA-storing technology as a tool that helps generate investigative leads, track down suspects and solve a variety of crimes. But there are also imperfections that have led to wrongful arrests and convictions. In 2017, the Swedish National Forensic Center conducted an evaluation of a Rapid DNA machine and found that 36% of the tests had errors affecting two or more samples, with only 77% of the samples correctly matching their DNA profiles in full.

Another study, 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 climbed to 90% when experts oversaw the process. While the FBI and other well-funded organizations enforce education and training requirements for their forensics staff, local department standards are more inconsistent, with handlers sometimes making terrible mistakes or committing outright fraud.

"We should all be concerned when we hear about unproven technologies like Rapid DNA being promoted for criminal justice purposes, especially given how few protections currently exist around DNA collection in the U.S. People have been falsely implicated for crimes they did not commit due to traditional DNA testing," Hudson Hongo, a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Salon.

Furthermore, some critics of Rapid DNA have warned that by probing into a unique identifier that reveals sensitive medical information, the technology is a violation of privacy and civil liberties.

"Rapid DNA machines enable this information to be stored in expansive government DNA databases, raising concerns about privacy, security, and misuse," said Tee Sannon, technology policy program director for the ACLU-WA. "This technology is also likely to exacerbate existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system, given that people of color are disproportionately more likely to be subject to DNA collection and arrests.”

The Reichert campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But the candidate's support for Rapid DNA aligns with the broader message of his "tough on crime" campaign, which also calls for more cops on the streets. He is also uniquely positioned among tough-on-crime candidates due to his history of lobbying for the technology on behalf of a firm that he worked for. 

After leaving the House in 2019, Reichert joined the lobbying firm Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs as vice president, where his only client was Thermo Fisher Scientific, a science and clinical research company that along with ANDE has exclusive control over the multi-billion-dollar Rapid DNA industry in the U.S. and lobbied extensively for legislation to integrate the technology into FBI operating procedures. Reichert, an advocate of Rapid DNA on both sides of the revolving door between politics and lobbying, would represent a direct link between that industry and the office he seeks to hold.

According to public records, Thermo Fisher Scientific shelled out $360,000 to Reichert's employer from 2021 to 2023; he was one of three lobbyists who worked on behalf of the Rapid DNA maker.

The Seattle Times reported that Reichert's role was to collaborate with government officials and draw on his 33-year experience in law enforcement to create a legal framework and legislation to enable the DNA collection of missing children in Central America. Reichert has touted his efforts to utilize Rapid DNA machines for this project.

"I took a job right after the day after I left Congress, I was working in Central America on human trafficking. And then my other part of my job was working on a new technology called Rapid DNA with sheriffs and police chiefs across the country, and it's a machine that's about 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 acted as the firm's representative in a federally-funded project at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, which uses DNA technology to curb human trafficking in Central America. The project seeks to help Central American countries set up DNA databases of family members of known missing children, which could be shared with each other and with U.S. authorities to verify the identities of children who show up at the border.

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

Reichert is adamant that Rapid DNA is the tool that law enforcement needs turn things around in a state that is, according to his campaign website, “a haven for crime, drugs, homelessness, human trafficking, and other serious problems.” While Reichert often cites his work in Central America as an eye-opening experience that led him to this belief, he has not mentioned the fact that he was paid to lobby for its use in the first place.