Pioneering Privacy Law Runs Into More Trouble In Maryland

Newsy has learned Maryland missed a key deadline in the rollout of new ancestry DNA privacy rules, another sign of trouble for the stalled law.

The rollout of a groundbreaking privacy law in Maryland protecting ancestry data online has experienced another setback, Newsy has found. 

Last month a Newsy investigation revealed how Maryland Department of Health officials quietly stopped implementing one of the first laws in the nation to set limits on police access to DNA data uploaded by Americans researching their ancestry. 

The Maryland Department of Health has now missed an Oct. 1 deadline, written into law, that required establishing a licensing program for labs that use forensic genetic genealogy, a technique deployed by police investigating serious offenses to compare DNA from a crime scene to DNA uploaded by consumers on ancestry websites.