biometric containment (privacy, fingerprints, dead utah blond es)

[Trei, Peter]

> Optimizzin Al-gorithym[SMTP:al at 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