Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting
FINGERPRINTING
Name:Abhishek chatterjee
Reg No:11A006
Batch :2011-16
Submitted To:
Mr Jagdeesh Chandra
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INDEX
Introduction:What is Fingerprinting
Pg 2
History
Pg 3
Criticism of fingerprinting
Pg9
Conclusion
Pg 12
References
Pg 14
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Introduction: What Is Fingerprinting
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the
friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term,
fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction
ridges of any part of a human or other primate hand. A print
from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges. A
friction ridge is a raised portion of the epidermis on the digits
(fingers and toes), the palm of the hand or the sole of the foot,
consisting of one or more connected ridge units of friction ridge
skin.
HISTORY
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The earliest dated prints of the ridges of the skin on human
hands and feet were made about 4,000 years ago during the
pyramid building era in Egypt. In addition, one small portion of
palm print, not known to be human, has been found impressed
in hardened mud at a 10,000-years old site in Egypt.
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From his illustrations, it can be seen that the Latin
classifications refer to what Henry would later name arches,
tented arches, loops, whorls and twinned loops. Purkinje's
research was purely anatomical, and he made no mention of
individuals being identified by the patterns that he described.
However, he recommended further research, and others soon
took up his challenge.
Herschel did not make his feelings known and did not suggest
that he had developed a method of registering and identifying
criminals, nor did he foresee any crime scene application as
Faulds had done.
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In a letter written to Nature in October 1880, Faulds relates
how he took many sets of fingerprints and palm prints and
studied them. He further described the pattern formations on
the fingers, referred to "loops" and "whorls" and stating how
good sets of fingerprints may be obtained by the use of "a
common slate or smooth board of any kind, or a sheet of tin,
spread over very thinly with printer's ink. This technique, still in
use today, appears to be a botanical technique called nature-
printing.
Fauld's most important conclusion was that fingerprints do not change and that
finger marks (that is, latent prints) left on objects by bloody or greasy fingers
"may lead to the scientific identification of criminals".
The post was taken to the fingerprint bureau for comparison with the inked
fingerprint impressions of Velasquez. They were not identical, but the blood
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impressions were found to be identical with those of Rojas. When confronted
with this evidence, Rojas confessed to the murder of her children, and in July
1892 she was found guilty of their murder and sentenced to life imprisonment ..
By the end of that year, the Fingerprint Office at New Scotland Yard was fully
functional, the first British court conviction by fingerprints being obtained in
1902. Approximately 10 years after the publication of Henry's book, his
classification system was being used by police forces and prison authorities
throughout the English-speaking world.
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Having been thus inspired to study fingerprints for ten years,
Galton published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint
analysis and identification and encouraged its use in forensic
science in his book Finger Prints. He had calculated that the
chance of a "false positive" (two different individuals having the
same fingerprints) was about 1 in 64 billion.
Juan Vucetich, an Argentine chief police officer, created the first
method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file,
associating these fingerprints to the anthropometric system
of Alphonse Bertillon, who had created, in 1879, a system to
identify individuals by anthropometric photographs and
associated quantitative descriptions. In 1892, after studying
Galton's pattern types, Vucetich set up the world's first
fingerprint bureau. In that same year, Francisca Rojas
of Necochea, was found in a house with neck injuries, whilst her
two sons were found dead with their throats cut. Rojas accused
a neighbour, but despite brutal interrogation, this neighbour
would not confess to the crimes. Inspector Alvarez, a colleague
of Vucetich, went to the scene and found a bloody thumb mark
on a door. When it was compared with Rojas' prints, it was
found to be identical with her right thumb. She then confessed
to the murder of her sons.
A Fingerprint Bureau was established in Calcutta (Kolkata),
India, in 1897, after the Council of the Governor General
approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used
for the classification of criminal records. Working in the
Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau, before it became the
Fingerprint Bureau, were Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose.
Haque and Bose were Indian fingerprint experts who have been
credited with the primary development of a fingerprint
classification system eventually named after their
supervisor, Sir Edward Richard Henry. The Henry Classification
System, co-devised by Haque and Bose, was accepted in
England and Wales when the first United Kingdom Fingerprint
Bureau was founded inScotland Yard, the Metropolitan
Police headquarters, London, in 1901. Sir Edward Richard
Henry subsequently achieved improvements in dactyloscopy.
In the United States, Dr. Henry P. DeForrest used fingerprinting
in the New York Civil Service in 1902, and by 1906, New York
City Police DepartmentDeputy Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot,
an expert in the Bertillon system and a finger print advocate at
Police Headquarters, introduced the fingerprinting of criminals
to the United States.
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The Scheffer case of 1902 is the first case of the identification,
arrest and conviction of a murderer based upon fingerprint
evidence. Alphonse Bertillonidentified the thief and murderer
Scheffer, who had previously been arrested and his fingerprints
filed some months before, from the fingerprints found on a
fractured glass showcase, after a theft in a dentist's apartment
where the dentist's employee was found dead. It was able to be
proved in court that the fingerprints had been made after the
showcase was broken. A year later, Alphonse Bertillon created a
method of getting fingerprints off smooth surfaces and took a
further step in the advance of dactyloscopy.
Since the advent of fingerprint detection, many criminals have
resorted to the wearing of gloves in order to avoid leaving
fingerprints, which thus makes the crime investigation more
difficult. However, the gloves themselves can leave prints that
are just as unique as human fingerprints. After collecting glove
prints, law enforcement can then match them to gloves that they
have collected as evidence. In many jurisdictions the act of
wearing gloves itself while committing a crime can be
prosecuted as an inchoate offense.
As many offenses are crimes of opportunity, many assailants are
not in the possession of gloves when they commit their illegal
activities. Thus, assailants have been viewed using pulled-down
sleeves and other pieces of clothing and fabric to handle objects
and touch surfaces during the commission of their crimes.
John Edgar Hoover’s contribution
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babies, factory workers, and school children – America's
fingerprint collection would be complete. It is this idea that
appeals to advocates of universal fingerprinting.
Although today, the police and the public have a more realistic
view of crime and criminals, the criminalistic science of
fingerprints is still a symbol of police professionalism and
successful crime fighting. In the mid-1980's, at the height of the
missing children scare, programs promoting the voluntary
fingerprinting of school children and babies sprang up all over
the country.
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against it was so strong, the law was quickly repealed. Vucetich
died in 1925 and the idea of fingerprinting everyone has not
been brought up again in Argentina.
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Aadhar And Its Potential Impact
With a database many times larger than any other in the world,
Aadhaar's ability to leverage automated fingerprint and iris
modalities (and potentially automated face recognition) enables
rapid and reliable automated searching and identification
impossible to accomplish with fingerprint technology alone,
especially when searching children and elderly residents'
fingerprints.
CRITICISM OF FINGERPRINTING
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in the process of taking inked fingerprints. The fingerprints
can be rendered illegible in the inking process if:
The finger has not been rolled fully from side to side.
The entire finger from its joint to its top has not been
inked.
The finger is not held securely in place. If the technician
holds the fingers too loosely (or too securely), there
could be a smudging or blurring of the prints, thus
rendering a false pattern of prints.
The usage of an inappropriate texture of ink can result
in running of the ink and pattern distortion. Black
printer's ink of a heavy texture is the advisable texture
to use.
The usage of too much ink can distort the patterns.
The usage of too little ink will render the ridge patterns
indistinguishable.
Temporary disabilities to the fingerprint subject, such
as cuts and blisters, can distort the pattern of the
ridges.
Excessive perspiration on the fingers of the subject may
inhibit the ink from adhering to the fingers which would
result in a blurred and inaccurate outcome.
Errors made on the information card that accompanies
the fingerprints, such as name, date of birth, sex and
age can lead to complications as to the authenticity of
the prints
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after the shooting confirmed the identification, although Ms.
Lacy did not.14 In addition to the eyewitness evidence,
investigators located a fingerprint on the glass used by the
individual who had gained entry to Ms. Lacy’s house.15 The
print was matched to that of Mr. Cowans by two fingerprint
examiners working for the Boston Police Department.16 A
fingerprint examiner retained by the defense later confirmed
the fingerprint match. On the basis of this evidence, Mr.
Cowans was convicted of shooting a police officer and
sentenced to thirty to forty-five years in state prison.In the
pre-DNA world, Mr. Cowans would no doubt have spent much
of his adult life behind bars. However, in May 2003 (six years
after Cowans’s conviction), at the defendant’s request, Orchid
Cellmark Laboratories performed DNA testing on both the
glass and the baseball hat found at the crime scene. The DNA
profile found on the glass did not match that of Mr. Cowans,
but it did match that of the primary contributor to the DNA on
the baseball cap.In January 2004, at the request of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, further testing was
performed on the sweatshirt. The resulting DNA profile
matched the common profile found on the glass and the
baseball hat.21 Initially, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney
David E. Meier stated that, given the “compelling” evidence
of the fingerprint on the glass, his office would retry Cowans
if the conviction were overturned. Two days later, after the
fingerprint had been re-examined, however, Meier changed
his mind.In addressing Superior Court Judge Peter Lauriat,
Meier explained that the fingerprint evidence presented at
trial did not match that of Cowans: “I can conclusively and
unequivocally state, your honor, that that purported match
was a mistake.” Mr. Cowans was then released, having spent
six years in jail for a crime he did not commit.
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Oregon.From the start, there were troubling aspects about
the match. Mr. Mayfield had ties to Muslim individuals and
organizations thought to make him suspect, but there was no
evidence that he had been out of the country for many years.
Nevertheless, the FBI examiners concluded that the print was
a “100 percent positive identification,” and so informed the
Spanish authorities on April 2, 2004.The Spanish disagreed.
On April 13, 2004, the Spanish authorities reported in a
memorandum to the FBI that the match was “conclusively
negative.” Where the FBI found fifteen points of agreement
for the fingerprint, the Spanish found only
seven.Nevertheless, the FBI continued to maintain that the
latent print on the bag matched that of Mr. Mayfield and
arranged a meeting with Spanish officials in Madrid on April
21, 2004 to present their analysis. The meeting did nothing to
change the opinion of the FBI and, subsequently, Mr.
Mayfield was arrested on May 6, 2004 on a material witness
warrant. Fortunately for Mr. Mayfield, the Spanish authorities
persisted with their investigation and, shortly after Mayfield’s
arrest, announced that they had matched the latent print to
an Algerian named Ouhnane Daoud. The final blow came
when the Spanish authorities “found traces of Daoud’s DNA
in a rural cottage outside Madrid where investigators believe
the terrorist cell held planning sessions and assembled the
backpack bombs used in the attack.” Mr. Mayfield was finally
released after spending two weeks in jail. What went wrong?
FBI officials initially gave conflicting accounts. In June 2004,
The New York Times reported on the agency’s changing
positions: F.B.I. officials told Congress members in the
briefings last week that they had come up with the match
after working off a ‘second-generation’ digital print—meaning
a copy of a copy. But they gave a somewhat different
explanation in interviews this week, saying they were now
uncertain what generation the digital print represented. But
the F.B.I. official who spoke to The New York Times on
condition of anonymity added that the real issue was the
quality of the latent print that the Spaniards originally took
from the blue bag.The determination by an F.B.I. examiner
that the print was useable was hasty and erroneous, F.B.I.
officials said, and et the agency off in the wrong direction and
corrupted the rest of the process.
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CONCLUSION
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Refferences
1. http://wwy.brooklaw.edu/students/journals/bjlp/jlp13i_zabell.pdf
2. http://www.clpex.com/Information/Pioneers/henry-classification.pdf
3. http://www.onin.com/fp/fphistory.html
4. http://galton.org/fingerprints/books/herschel/herschel-1916-origins-1up.pdf
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