On 1/8/2016 12:58 PM, John H. wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 06:01:47 -0500, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

"The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS,
is a national fingerprint and criminal history system that responds to
requests 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to help our local, state, and
federal partners—and our own investigators—solve and prevent crime and
catch criminals and terrorists. IAFIS provides automated fingerprint
search capabilities, latent search capability, electronic image storage,
and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses.

What is included in IAFIS: Not only fingerprints, but corresponding
criminal histories; mug shots; scars and tattoo photos; physical
characteristics like height, weight, and hair and eye color; and
aliases. The system also includes civil fingerprints, mostly of
individuals who have served or are serving in the U.S. military or have
been or are employed by the federal government. The fingerprints and
criminal history information are submitted voluntarily by state, local,
and federal law enforcement agencies.

How big it is: IAFIS is the largest criminal fingerprint database in the
world, housing the fingerprints and criminal histories for more than 70
million subjects in the criminal master file, along with more than 34
million civil prints. Included in our criminal database are fingerprints
from 73,000 known and suspected terrorists processed by the U.S. or by
international law enforcement agencies who work with us."

IAFIS was launched in 1999. It's replacement, NGI became fully
operational in 2014.

Wow. Over a 100 million fingerprints and records on file and instantly
available to federal, state and local law enforcement. So much for the
argument that maintaining a gun registry with chain of custody records
is not technically feasible.

I've not heard anyone say a gun registry as described was not technically feasible.
Was that someone here? The question seemed to be 'was it worthwhile'? Hell, I figure
it's about as worthwhile as a registry of model airplanes. My 10 year old grandson is
now registered. What a joke.

I wonder if IAFIS also includes all the former military whose fingerprints reside
somewhere. Seems like 70 million would be a small number if that's the case.


According to the website I got the info from, yes, it does. Not sure
when it started though. The IADIS system was put in place in 1999.
Could be that our fingerprint records are not included.