A blog about cutting edge technology at its maximum pace.

Ritesh Warke On Monday, May 2, 2011
The Henry system finally enabled law enforcement officials to classify and identify individual fing0…2erprints. Unfortunately, the system was very cumbersome. When fingerprints came in, detectives would have to compare them manually with the fingerprints on file for a specific criminal (that's if the person even had aa record). The process would take hours or even days and didn't always produce a match. By the 1970s, computers were in existence, and the FBI knew it had to automate the process of classifying, searching for and matching fingerprints. The Japanese National Police Agency paved the way for this automation, establishing thefirst electronic fingerprint matching system in the 1980s. Their Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) , eventually enabled law enforcement officials around the world to cross-check a print with millions of fingerprint records almost instantaneously.

That changed in 1999, with the introduction of Integrated AFIS (IAFIS) . This system is maintained by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division. It can categorize, search and retrieve fingerprints from virtually anywhere in the country in as little as 30 minutes. It also includes mug shots and criminal histories on some 47 million people. IAFIS allows local, state and federal law enforcement agencies tohave access to the same huge database of information. The IAFIS system operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
But IAFIS isn't just used for criminal checks. It also collects fingerprints for employment, licenses and social services programs (such as homeless shelters). When all of these uses are taken together, about one out of every six people in this country has a fingerprint recordon IAFIS.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

New Users Register Here