If you had asked me a few days ago, I would have said no. I lean toward libertarianism, and I’ve always been disturbed by the potential big-brother aspect of widespread fingerprinting. If you’ve ever been arrested, served in the military, or applied for a passport, your prints are probably on record. Here in Maine, you can’t even work in a public school without submitting to fingerprinting. I have never objected to keeping the fingerprints of convicted criminals, but I wouldn’t support keeping the fingerprints of the accused on file after they’re acquitted.
A recent case is making me rethink my position, but I’m having trouble decided where I stand now. (See the Bangor Daily News article ) A New York man is accused of murdering two men, dismembering them, and dumping their bodies in New Jersey. He is also suspected in the deaths of 3 other men, whose bodies were found in New York and Pennsylvania. The break in the case came when Maine submitted its fingerprint files to AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), and his prints matched those recovered from plastic bags the body parts were found in. His prints were on file only because he was arrested for manslaughter in Maine in 1973, but he was acquitted of that charge.
So, what do you think? Whose fingerprints should be on file? Acquitted suspects? But where do we stop? Do we fingerprint all licensed drivers? All schoolchildren? All public employees? All welfare recipients? Why stop with fingerprints? Why not take DNA sampless from everyone too? But on the other hand, I don’t want a serial murderer on the loose any more than anyone else does.
fingerprints are to me, a special classification of information. Unlike your social security number for example, they cannot be used to defraud you or to discover priveleged information about you. Unlike DNA, they cannot be used to determine personal health issues for example.
I would not support anyone’s efforts to fingerprint all of us. Without a reason to demand compliance, my right to not have to subject to searches by the government would prohibit them from obtaining it in the first place.
However, once they’re submitted (for whatever reason, including the ‘booking’ procedure), I can’t think of a reason why the government should be prohibited from using it in the future should you decide to do something criminal.
I guess that’s the issue for me - the only use that I’m aware of is as a tool in criminal investigations. Now, if anyone can come up with specific ways fingerprints can be used against you except to identify you in a criminal proceding, I’ll be willing to listen to it and perhaps modify the position.
(BTW, when my son was younger, I got him fingerprinted, but made certain that I kept the only copy. at that point, there was no compelling reason for the state to obtain his prints in the first place)
That’s an issue in the UK too. They’re talking about changing the law such that dna samples taken during routine screening of (say) 1000 people in the vicinity of a crime are to be kept rather than destroyed after the case is solved.
I believe that this should not happen, but I acknowledge that it is a difficult position to argue.
Again in the UK the presence of CCTV cameras in city centres (and now above motorway junctions) and the rapidly increasing power of police facial recognition systems mean that in time they will be able to recreate (at least some of) people’s movements.
The justification that some crimes may be more easily solved is (imo) not enough.
Wring said: fingerprints are to me, a special classification of information. Unlike your social security number for example, they cannot be used to defraud you or to discover priveleged information about you. Unlike DNA, they cannot be used to determine personal health issues for example.
And that does seem to make a firm line between fingerprinting, social security numbers and DNA. Our Social security numbers are already compromised and who know what will happen to DNA.
Fingerprinting is already moving into another internet issue where there is talk of making fingerprints as good as a signature to facilitate internet business. If an internet check would become valid with a print of my thumb and my fingerprints were already on file and available at any police station I might end up a broke and unhappy camper.
My fingerprints were taken several years ago when I worked with children in schools on a volunteer basis for a very short time in California. I’d be willing to bet they were not discarded when my project was completed.
I just gotta say, this is why I love these boards. Biblio, I had never even thought of this issue before, but it’s fascinating. I’m gonna do some deep thinking and post my response later.
Georgia instituted a requirement of fingerprinting to obtain a driver’s license a couple of years back. As I understood it, it was part of a nationwide effort to build a database of fingerprints for use in criminal investigations. There was a great public outcry, but I believe the fingerprinting requirement is still in place. (I haven’t had to renew my license for a while, so I’m not certain about that.)
If you start using your fingerprints as an ID on the internet, the least you have to worry about is the copy in the police station. Any form of ID you give to an internet site is almost as good as publicly published. The problem is that many internet sites keep your ID in their database even after the transaction has been completed, and often crackers can break into these databases quite easily and steal your fingerprints (OK, some of the more reputable sites are quite secure, but many of the smaller shops are not, YMMV).
And I think that’s the biggest argument against fingerprinting everybody. As soon as you do, corporations will say “hey, the ssn doesn’t work anymore because people use stolen/fake ssns all the time, and now we have everybody’s fingerprints so let’s use those as an ID!” Then fingerprints get stolen, and round-and-round we go…
And ssns, credit card numbers, etc can be changed as soon as they become compromised. But if your fingerprints or retina scans are compromised, you can’t just go and get new fingers and eyes; at least not yet.
My stance is that they should be kept on file. If you’re arrested, you get your picture taken and you get fingerprinted. Thems the rules. It doesn’t matter if you’re guilty, innocent, from another planet, or a subspecies of protozoa that don’t have fingers, that’s what happens.
Should they throw out the mug shots as well if you’re acquitted? Should we force everyone to erase from their memories everything dealing with the trial? Information is information. Once it’s out there, you can’t take it away. And in this case I see no reason to. The more information we have, the easier it is for the police to do their jobs. The evidence collected in 1973 was collected legally regardless of whether he was innocent or guilty.
And on a side note, bibliophage, I think your premise is flawed. You’re rethinking your position on this issue based upon the fact that the fingerprints led to his suspicion in the crime. It does NOT lead to his guilt in the crime. That’s for a court to decide. For all we know, he’s innocent. But the problem here is that you’ve assumed (without actually saying as much) that he is guilty. And through that assumption you’ve been thinking about reversing your opinion on the issue. His guilt or innocence in this scenario should not affect the underlying opinion of whether keeping fingerprints on file is a good or bad thing.
Ender, what about cases where the police essentially trawl for dna, going from house to house collecting maybe 5000 samples. It’s probable that no single person is under suspicion.
If the police asked me, I’d be quite happy to supply a dna sample, but only on the understanding that it would be destroyed when I was free from suspicion.
First of all, my fingerprints were taken about 30 years ago when I went to work briefly for the Texas Department of Public Safety. I suppose they are still on file somewhere, and I’m Ok with that.
More to the point of the OP, remember that being acquitted is not necessarily the same thing as being innocent. It just means there was reasonable doubt.
Basically I just don’t get concerned about a big database of fingerprints somewhere. The potential for its use in solving crimmes is high and the potential for its abuse is low.
Screening 1000 people in the general vicinity of a crime zone is routine in the UK? I wouldn’t subit any DNA here in the states without some kind of warrant.
in 1989, Joseph Wambaugh wrote The Blooding about a massive effort in England where they obtained 4000 blood samples from men trying to identify the killer.
I’m never impresed by a slippery slope argument. DNA and fingerprints are vastly different things. With DNA you can determine lots of things about an individual. Not so with fingerprints.
With respect to a DNA database, I wonder if you couldn’t take one of those small leftover sections of DNA and keep that on file? As I understand there are quite a few sections of DNA that apparently do nothing but are sort of an artifact of evolution.
This leads me to ask, what does happen to all the fingerprints of children in those ‘registration’ programs? Wring has said that he kept the only copy of his sons’ prints.
In my own experience, I had to be fingerprinted for a criminal background check through both the RCMP and FBI (for getting a Green Card). Once I have my Green Card I want to do what I can to get my prints removed from any database.
Female by the way. In my case, the set up was they’d roll the kids prints, and give you the only copy. IIRC (and this was something like 13 years ago 'cause he was just a little guy at the time), they made a point of it, as if ‘other more recent programs’ hadn’t and they’d seen the light.