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Fears over covert DNA database
Stephen Fidler November 18 2008
https://www.ft.com/content/30574726-b4fe-11dd-b780-0000779fd18c
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Valuable intelligence on thousands of suspected terrorists risks being lost because of backlogs at a little-known US federal government database that processes DNA samples gathered in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The unfinished work at the database – part of a classified intelligence partnership of military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies – has been referred to in public documents but has not been openly discussed by US government officials.

The Department of Justice sought funding this year for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of the agencies taking part in the programme, to automate processing of DNA material.

The FBI can process only two samples every three days using manual methods, yet the database has been receiving 9,000 samples a year.

The programme would “likely lose valuable intelligence from the lag time required to analyse these samples”, said the 2009 funding request to Congress.

Steven Aftergood, director of the government secrecy project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the database was “truly shrouded in mystery”.

“Not only is the name of the database almost never cited, but the role of DNA collection in terrorist identification is not publicly discussed even where one would expect it,” he said.

One exception was a March 2007 report from the Defense Science Board, a panel of outside experts that advises the Pentagon, which said 17,000 samples had been handled by the database while 30,000 awaited processing.

In 2005, according to a separate Pentagon document, 7,000 samples were processed and 10,000 were “inbound” from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The searchable database has been identified by several names, including the Joint Federal Agencies Intelligence DNA Database.

It is operated in part by private contractors and is an offshoot of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, that identifies remains of soldiers missing in action.

The Defense Science Board report said the idea for the covert repository and database of DNA samples for identifying and tracking terrorist subjects, which it dubbed “Black Helix”, first “surfaced” in February 2001 – a month after President George W. Bush took office and before the September 11 2001 attacks.

People who have followed the programme say information about the military’s DNA collection activities disappeared from the Pentagon website in 2003, when a legislative push by the Bush administration that included a proposal to create a DNA database for terror suspects failed.

That failure meant that the FBI could continue storing DNA data only from US adults convicted of crimes and not from suspects. Under US law that restriction would not apply to foreigners.

Some terrorism specialists have called for greater use of DNA in an effort to track terrorist associates.

In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in April, Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation urged for the creation of an integrated US database, including DNA data, as part of an effort “to identify friends and/or family members who brought the suicide attackers into the jihad”.

The idea that DNA could be used to establish “guilt by association”, coupled with the lack of transparency about the way DNA is handled by the military, has the potential to alarm those concerned with the well-being of detainees.

In a 2005 article in the Lancet, Robin Coupland and colleagues from the Inter­national Committee of the Red Cross said best laboratory practice and protection of personal data were not high priorities for those building international DNA databases.

In cases where DNA was gathered from detainees, and others, they said that it was “far from clear what laws, if any, protect genetic data”. They also said people from whom DNA was being gathered were often very vulnerable.

When contacted by the Financial Times, Dr Coupland said: “Some detained people have expressed concerns to our officials about their DNA samples”.

In keeping with Red Cross practice, he refused to elaborate on where these detainees were or which government was detaining them.

The Department of Defense repeatedly refused to clarify the procedures and protocols applying to the collection, custody and exploitation of the samples and the database.

Lt Col Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman, said the issue was “fairly sensitive. We do use identification measures etc but everyone’s very reluctant [to talk about it] because of the way it’s used in an intelligence manner you run into the classified gamut.”