Optimizzin Al-gorithym[SMTP:al@qaeda.org] wrote:

So the neighbors of that dead blonde Utah jailbait volunteered their fingerprints, presumably for discounting them, though possibly not. In any case: how could a neighbor-friendly cypherpunk give prints which were *not* entered into the Fed Oracle?

Only way I can think of is to physically control your deadtree print sheet and require the Feebs to manually enter the dozen topo-feature-locations

of your print from a memoryless measuring device, (eg, a glass lens and reticle) in front of you, then take the print sheet with you. How you verify that the imaging system is memoryless is up to you.

Comments?

It's SOP to take fingerprints of anyone who frequented the crime scene, even if there is no doubt of their innocence. This enables the majority of fingerprints collected to be eliminated from consideration. I remember reading of one of the very earliest fingerprint cases, somewhere in Europe (Austria?)in the late 1800s. A murder had taken place in a boarding house, and the crime scene was seriously disturbed by reporters, on-lookers, souvenier hunters, etc. However, a bottle with a clear handprint was found under the bed. There were no fingerprint registries at that time. The detective had to get fingerprint cards for everyone who was near the site, and found the murderer. The book included a photo of the bonfire they made of the fingerprint cards afterwards. Since then, of course, the level of ethics of the LEAs has deteriorated markedly - if they get a set of prints for whatever reason, it is never destroyed. ----- One civic volunteer program I work with is CHIP, a free local child identification program (www.mychip.org). It provides parents with data to help in identifying their children if they go missing. This includes a fingerprint card taken by a policeman. All the data collected is retained by the parents - nothing by the police, and CHIP retains only a permission slip. I've been very heartened by the fact that now the majority of parents who are signing up their children actually raise the privacy issue - they want to make sure that neither we nor the police keep copies of the data. Peter Trei