Transcripts of the Attorney General's Initiative on DNA Laboratory Backlogs (AGID-LAB) Working Group

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

INTERNATIONAL DNA ANALYSIS

MR. SCHMITT: We have two more areas to cover, which will be brief. The first of those two has to do with laying the ground work or what ground work needs to be laid to encourage the use of DNA analysis on an international basis. I know the Bureau is loaning the CODIS software, making it available to law enforcement agencies in other states.

I had an interesting experience two years ago when I was on a trip to Columbia and I met with the head of the Columbian National Police Laboratory, and he was very excited about the possibility of getting CODIS in his country, and he said that he was going to recommend to the chief of the national police that they take a DNA analysis of every citizen of the nation of Columbia and have it in the database so they could solve lots of crimes.

I appreciated his enthusiasm, and they didn't have the Fourth Amendment problems that we have, but it was interesting how enthusiastic he was for this. I wondered if you might tell us, Joe, if you care to, where this is going and if other folks have an idea as to what we need to do, we the Federal Government, in terms of helping to insure that there is standardization across the board. Joe, this may already be done by the Bureau.

MR. DIZINNO: I don't have the numbers, but we have given the CODIS software to a number of international law enforcement agencies who are incorporating that as their DNA database in their country. Because of different legal issues we can't really recommend to them how they run that database. That database at least currently cannot be connected to the CODIS database in the United States. It's not to say that we can't perform searches of each other's database, which we're asked to do fairly often and we do do that, but because of the legal issues involved, it's very difficult to dictate as to what their standards and QA/QC must be in a different country.

MR. COFFMAN: I will say that right now because we get these requests quite a bit, it's far easier to have another country search a state's database or even the national database than it is the other way around. For instance, Canada. We search things for Canada all the time, but it is somewhat of an ordeal to send the profile up there for them to search, and they point you to - the Interpol has developed a whole area of their web site to search samples internationally and there is a PDF file with a 52-page handbook on what you have to do to search something through the international community.

So I really think it's not coming from us; it's more the other countries. The only thing I can say is I hope we can break those barriers down a little bit to where it's an easier exchange of data, but right now they're significant, and it doesn't seem to be coming from us.

MR. TILSTONE: Sort of a related issue is the issue - I think the issue isn't CODIS. The issue is the markers that are used because a database is a database is a database, and providing there is a commonality of the markers and appropriate QC in place, then you could have international exchange of data, but if you start that premise and just go one step further - and this might be an issue for AGID-LAB to think about - the success of that assumes that we've reached some degree of maturity and are going to stay there in regard to the current set of markers, and that's probably just as far from the truth as you could get.

So would it be worthwhile for this group to at some stage looking ahead to what is going to be after Idenofiler, what is going to be after STRs, and could we make some sort of recommendations now about the database implications?

MR. COFFMAN: Really, to be honest with you, it really is privacy concerns in other countries that are the barriers because really we share the same markers with Canada. If you're using the Idenofiler kit, you're sharing nine with the European community. If you're not, you're sharing seven or eight.

So the loci in common, I really don't think it's a problem. I think it's just the administrative, the privacy issues of their citizens, even though they're criminals, being searched against another country and releasing that information to this other country.

As far as the future markers, I'm like you. You can never say never. I mean things will change. I hope I'll have my house in Colorado in the mountains by then. I'm hoping the new technology changes we see are just better ways to get the same result that we're currently getting because I think we have a very discriminating system in this country, and I would hate to think that - to me it would have to be a significant benefit for it to warrant retesting several million offender samples in the country to make the database worthwhile. I'm not saying something couldn't come up.

MS. HART: I was just going to say with this I don't expect that given what the Attorney General's directive to me was about what I should report back to him about, that I would really get into this issue other than to say that whatever recommendations you make for like long-term capacity building and the long-term view should take into account that you have international issues that you may want to be addressing now and laying the ground work for future exchanges down the road. I don't think it's a particularly controversial thing to say. I don't think it has to be any more detailed than that. Does anybody have any thoughts on that?