Inside the FBI's Fingerprint Factory

By: Edecio Martinez
Topics: Daily Blotter

(AP / CBS)

NEW YORK (CBS) Four hours from Columbus, Ohio, sits a highly-guarded government building that's helping police find criminals faster.

WBNS News CrimeTracker 10's Angela An reports about an advanced federal research facility that according to the FBI can process billions of fingerprint comparisons a day.

The FBI's multi-billion dollar, two football-field-sized Criminal Justice Information Services building stores roughly 60 million sets of fingerprints and helps law enforcement track everyone from Al Qaeda terrorists to the alleged Craigslist killer.

"On the criminal side, we have identified about 15,000 wanted people per month that are arrested," the facility's assistant acting director Jerry Pender told Angela An of WBNS News.

Fingerprints are snapped directly from the crime scene using a wireless scanner and sent to the FBI database with immediate results.

American troops overseas can identify potential terror suspects from fingerprints on ad hoc explosives using only a laptop and portable scanner, according to the Ohio station. Prints are then checked against thousands of suspected or known terrorists in the FBI database.

In April 2009, a fingerprint that was left on a hotel wall that was sent to the federal faculty linked the accused Craigslist killer Phillip Markoff to an attack against another woman in Boston.

VIDEO COURTESY OF CBS AFFILIATE WBNS NEWS OHIO

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by neilkatz2000 July 30, 2009 11:45 AM EDT: Thanks disappointedfrompullman and internet_killed_tv_star for your comments. We also read the Wired criticism of our story. Our first headline referencing "600 billion fingerprints" was poorly written. We changed it.

The harder question was whether or not the FBI processed 600 billion "comparisons" per day. Wired claims they do not. We asked the FBI for clarification and they defended the 600 billion claim although they made it clear it was an estimate and that the estimate was based on measuring CPU and memory usage rather than an actual count.

Thanks for reading and keeping us on our toes.

Neil
Producer, CBSNews.com; Reply to this comment


by internet_killed_tv_star July 28, 2009 1:19 PM EDT: Thank you for correcting that headline CBS News! Evidently, you DO hear us sometimes.; Reply to this comment


by disappointedfrompullman July 27, 2009 1:18 PM EDT: There are roughly 6 billion people alive on the planet. 600 billion fingerprint sets per day seems astronomically high and suggests nothing so much as a reporter/editor who didn't care to THINK about what he/she was writing. I linked here from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/fbifingerprints/ thinking the headline "...600 billion fingerprints..." was laughable. At least Wired had the sense to check the numbers. This kind of "journalism" is why I don't watch tv news. Stop calling it "news," CBS. Have fun writing about your imaginary world; I'm certain you're not writing about the real one. I'm disappointed in you.; Reply to this comment


by dueprocess July 23, 2009 1:36 PM EDT: An important question to address might have been:

What is the rate of error?

(do journalists EVEN ask questions any more?); Reply to this comment


by gangesdak July 23, 2009 11:57 AM EDT: I am happy to know that FBI has such advanced finger print processing center that tell us heroic stories. When I got my citizenship this year, however, I had to be finger printed three times over a three month period by the same fabled FBI only to be finally told by them that I should go to my state Police for the same. My State Police complied in less than one week. Bravo FBI! Just keep buying expensive equipment at taxpayers' expense.; Reply to this comment