This panel aims to enable an interdisciplinary discussion on the legal and normative aspects of digital identities operating on a global scale. We focus on the use of commercial genealogical DNA databanks stemming from –oft US-based- private companies for criminal investigations all over the world. Namely, we attend to the convergence between surveillance, forensics and direct to consumer DNA technologies. This case is particularly salient because it ties together the rapid rise, and intensive use of biometric identifiers, the commodification of digital identities, and the use of recreational identity services in criminal investigations. The objective in unravelling this practice of converging technologies and uses, is to problematize digital identities, to examine how they become something else when mobilized for different purposes on a planetary scale, and what the social and legal consequences thereof are.
• What are the legal, social, and institutional environments enabling the production of identities produced through commercial DNA services?
• How are the technologies enabling the creation of these dafied genomic profiles altering existing perceptions of citizenship and -ultimately- of identity?
• What are the implications of the convergence of different, formerly geographically, legally, normatively isolated systems, uses, and practices around (digital) identities?
