Genetic information is already used to identify criminals in several countries, including the United Kingdom, France, the U.S., and Canada. A genome holds an individual's hereditary information, encoded in DNA.
Tatyana Moskalkova, a deputy head of the interior ministry's legal department, said: "The data bank will include genetic information of people convicted of severe crimes, biological traces of unidentified persons, people involved in crimes, close relatives of missing persons, and of unidentified bodies."
Russian daily Kommersant earlier cited medical experts as saying the ministry's plans infringed privacy rights and posed a threat for "biological security."
But the ministry official said the law, if adopted, will help to fight crime including terrorism and extremism, and simplify the procedure for identifying dead bodies via DNA analysis.
She said that the project would require substantial allocations from country's budget, and suggested a state target program should be set up due to the "complexity and high cost of organizational procedures to implement state genome registration."
