Civil liberties experts have stated that new federal rules would subject innocent citizens to criminal monitoring and allow the FBI to permanently hold sensitive genetic information.

By Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government plans to collect genetic samples from every citizen arrested over a federal crime and from many detained immigrants, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. For the first time, the DNA database will include data from noncitizens, including legal permanent residents detained by U.S. authorities, the Post said.

The initiative, to be made public within days, will add genetic information on more than 1 million people per year to a DNA database run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the newspaper said.

The government's current practice is to collect DNA only from those convicted of federal crimes, it said. Thirteen states now collect DNA samples upon arrest and turn them over to the federal government.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin, quoted by the Post, said the DNA "will provide an additional form of biometric identification from persons who would normally be fingerprinted."

The expansion of the database was backed by Congress and promoted as a way to find serial rapists, murderers and other offenders, the Post said.

The new rules would apply to all federal agencies with the power to arrest or detain, including the FBI, Border Patrol and Internal Revenue Service, the paper said.

Most of the DNA samples would come from swabbing the inside of a subject's cheeks, it said.

When fully implemented, the program could add roughly 1.2 million people per year to the database, according to unnamed U.S. officials cited by the Post.

Some 140,000 would be from federal crime arrests, with most of the rest from foreigners detained for entering the United States illegally, the article said.

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I heard a radio discussion the other day on this very topic. One of the guests on the program was Professor Henry T. Greely. He stated that the major problem with this doesn't have to do with collecting the DNA and coding it; the problem is that after doing so, the DNA is not discarded; rather, it is retained. To Retain = secure and keep for possible future use or application.

Henry T. "Hank" Greely is a leading expert and author on the legal, ethical, and social issues surrounding health law and the biosciences. He specializes in the legal implications of new biomedical technologies, especially those related to genetics, neuroscience, and stem cells. He frequently serves as an advisor on California, national, and international policy issues, and chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Active in university leadership, Professor Greely chairs the steering committee for the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, directs both the law school’s Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics' Program on Stem Cells in Society, and serves on the leadership council for the university’s interdisciplinary Bio-X Program.

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