U.S. to expand DNA collection efforts: report

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.

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.

For the first time, the DNA database will include data from noncitizens, including legal permanent residents detained by U.S. authorities, the Post said.

Civil liberties experts quoted in the article said the new rules would subject innocent citizens to criminal monitoring and allow the FBI to permanently hold sensitive genetic information.

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.

(Reporting by Chris Baltimore, editing by John O'Callaghan)