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Changes to how DNA is collected are at the heart of Russia’s latest encroachment on civil liberties

Since the start of the year, Russians have no longer had to commit a serious criminal offence to end up on the country’s DNA database — this will now happen to anyone who commits even a civil misdemeanour. How might the overreaching Russian authorities use the valuable genetic information it increasingly has access to?

When Russia’s law on genomic registration was adopted in 2008, it led to the creation of a federal DNA database, and mandated that anyone found guilty of committing a serious crime should have their unique and immutable genetic information entered into it. When the recently adopted amendments were first proposed five years ago, human rights activists warned that expanding the genomic database would create ideal conditions for a police state and that it would run the risk of officials abusing their access to the readily available information. “However, in countries with weak judicial systems, problems may arise with the use of fake or contaminated results from a crime scene to help imprison an innocent person if a partial match is deemed good enough,” Pruss continues.

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