“Familial searching” in law enforcement DNA databases has been described as everything from “lifelong genetic surveillance” of innocent family members to an important “truth-finding tool” that could amplify the power of databases to identify the perpetrators of heinous crimes. In contrast to a traditional search for a match between a DNA profile in a database and an unknown DNA profile associated with a crime (a “cold hit”), a “familial search” looks for near misses that might mean that the crime-scene DNA came from a close relative of someone whose DNA profile is in the database. This procedure expands the number of investigative leads that database trawls can generate, but it also can place innocent family members under police scrutiny. A panel of experts will discuss the science of kinship analysis as applied to databases, the efficacy and drawbacks of the  procedure, implementation and administration, and the legal and policy issues it has spawned.