Category: NDNAD

On June 30, 2009, the Italian Parliament finally passed Law No. 85 that ratifies the Prum Convention and forms the legal ground for the creation of an Italian National DNA Database (NDNAD.)

Although this law might have benefited from UK and USA court experience in the field of DNA forensics, the current text indicates that neither British nor American case law have been taken into consideration. Furthermore, the law is flawed by a foggy understanding of the technicalities behind DNA profiling and sloppy wording that certainly will not facilitate the work of lawyers, prosecutors or judges. Just to highlight a few of these inconsistencies, it must be noted that art. 8 (Attivita` del laboratorio centrale per la banca dati nazionale del DNA – Activity of NDNA Database Central Laboratory) lacks any general provision that would oblige all the responsible parties to adopt serious and adequate security measures against unauthorized access, data tampering, and illegal handling of data and information. Continue reading “Italian NDNA database. The devil is in the details”

On May, 25 2009 the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) disclosed the results of an investigation over the DNA forensics database run by the Carabinieri’s Raggruppamento Investigativo Speciale (RIS.) ¹

According to the laconic press release, the DPA ordered RIS to enforce stricter security measures to track who access the database. Although the DPA (as often) didn’t release the full decision, it is a legitimate inference to say that RIS didn’t take DNA security seriously enough. DPA decision shares the same (flawed) cultural milieu of the Italian National DNA Database Institution Bill, soon to become into full force. The DPA objected nothing about RIS ( (as well as the NDNAD bill) to retain ? both biological sample and DNA profile. By doing so, the DPA laid the foundation for the most pervasive, State-controlled citizen mass privacy violation.

Current DNA profiling methods, such as the SNPs (read “snips”) are powerful enough to allow the identification of a person, without the need of preserving the biological sample that provided the genetic profile. By saying that Carabinieri (and the Parliament) are allowed to do the contrary, means bear the effective risk of having analysis of a very diferrent (and uncontrolled) kind to be performed on the genetic code of the inhabitant of the Italian NDNAD.

Pandora’s pot would be – then – ready to be opened.