Fingerprint Identification Issues
Military Personnel
|
Problem:
Many of the unidentified persons on this website are considered to be military veterans by local law enforcement. So…..that makes me ponder, why are they still unidentified? The military takes fingerprints, right? Yes, yes they do. Don't be fooled though, it is not quite that simple. Local law enforcement cannot just call up the Army and have fingerprints checked without a name to go by. |
Overview:
I am by no means an expert in biometrics. The research I did on this blog posting is based heavily on: information published by agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, The National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice, books written by experts in the field, and email correspondence with local agencies.
I will not be citing things directly, but the further reading list at the end of this blog should include all my sources if you’d like a more thorough understanding of these issues.
Focus Areas:
The purpose of this blog is to look at fingerprint identification issues when we have an unknown deceased person. While DNA is a wonderful thing, many of our cold cases did not, and will not ever, benefit from that type of technology. I am also specifically leaving out dental identification for the purpose of focusing strictly on the fingerprint issue.
For further clarification, I am going to specifically focus on civil/military fingerprint identification.
Criminal fingerprints are a different situation altogether. They are retained much longer, and with lesser privacy, so they seem to be more easily matched to unknown prints.
Scope of the “John Doe” problem:
In the 50 states, we have approximately 17,000 different local law enforcement jurisdictions that, on any given day, handle an approximate 100,000 open missing person’s cases.
It is estimated that an approximate 4,400 new unidentified deceased person cases are opened every year and about 1,000 of those cases will go ‘cold’. Currently, we have about 40,000 unidentified deceased person cases in the United States.
Nancy Ritter refers to this as a “mass disaster over time”. I couldn’t agree more.
Top issues for civilian or military John Doe identification using fingerprints:
Fingerprint policies, procedures, equipment, resources, training and database availability: vary on national, state and local levels.
Due to privacy concerns, there is not one single national level “all-inclusive” fingerprint repository database that is accessible to all local law enforcement personnel handling the John Doe cases.
What we have is: a maze of databases, created at different times, created for different purposes, with varying access and search capabilities, containing different fingerprints, which have a variety of retention standards and sharing capabilities.
Having been fingerprinted at some point in your life, does not mean that anyone will ever find your records if you become a John Doe.
Military John Doe Case Study:
I’m going to refer to one Military John Doe case for demonstration purposes, but, the challenges really pertain to all the DNA negative unknown deceased person (UDP) cases.
For some background information, here are previous posts on his case:
http://www.veterandoe.com/john-and-jane-doe-blog/twentynine-palms-connection-to-1997-nyc-usmc-john-doe
I am by no means an expert in biometrics. The research I did on this blog posting is based heavily on: information published by agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, The National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice, books written by experts in the field, and email correspondence with local agencies.
I will not be citing things directly, but the further reading list at the end of this blog should include all my sources if you’d like a more thorough understanding of these issues.
Focus Areas:
The purpose of this blog is to look at fingerprint identification issues when we have an unknown deceased person. While DNA is a wonderful thing, many of our cold cases did not, and will not ever, benefit from that type of technology. I am also specifically leaving out dental identification for the purpose of focusing strictly on the fingerprint issue.
For further clarification, I am going to specifically focus on civil/military fingerprint identification.
Criminal fingerprints are a different situation altogether. They are retained much longer, and with lesser privacy, so they seem to be more easily matched to unknown prints.
Scope of the “John Doe” problem:
In the 50 states, we have approximately 17,000 different local law enforcement jurisdictions that, on any given day, handle an approximate 100,000 open missing person’s cases.
It is estimated that an approximate 4,400 new unidentified deceased person cases are opened every year and about 1,000 of those cases will go ‘cold’. Currently, we have about 40,000 unidentified deceased person cases in the United States.
Nancy Ritter refers to this as a “mass disaster over time”. I couldn’t agree more.
Top issues for civilian or military John Doe identification using fingerprints:
Fingerprint policies, procedures, equipment, resources, training and database availability: vary on national, state and local levels.
Due to privacy concerns, there is not one single national level “all-inclusive” fingerprint repository database that is accessible to all local law enforcement personnel handling the John Doe cases.
What we have is: a maze of databases, created at different times, created for different purposes, with varying access and search capabilities, containing different fingerprints, which have a variety of retention standards and sharing capabilities.
Having been fingerprinted at some point in your life, does not mean that anyone will ever find your records if you become a John Doe.
Military John Doe Case Study:
I’m going to refer to one Military John Doe case for demonstration purposes, but, the challenges really pertain to all the DNA negative unknown deceased person (UDP) cases.
For some background information, here are previous posts on his case:
http://www.veterandoe.com/john-and-jane-doe-blog/twentynine-palms-connection-to-1997-nyc-usmc-john-doe
|
This is the journey his fingerprints took – per my information:
The fingerprint journey below is likely similar to what happened with most of the cases on this website, as well as any other John Doe site.
|
So what do we know at the end of this journey?
Well, it is highly unlikely he is any kind of real criminal. Those prints (depending on the crime) would have been in any of, or all three of, the first three databases. We know he is probably not listed in the missing person’s database of NamUs with prints on file. That is pretty much all we know.
The problems:
These issues are by no means exclusive to New York City. They exist in many jurisdictions and represent the balancing act between a citizen’s right to privacy and our need to identify our own citizens (alive or deceased). We also need to keep in mind the year(s) involved in these cases. What is available now was certainly not available then.
So, what wasn't checked? Well, here we go:
NYC – criminal and civil (negative results): We have 33 other cities with populations over 500k in the United States. None of those databases were checked.
NY State – criminal and civil (negative results): We have 49 other state databases and one multistate database (Western Identification Network, WIN). None of those were checked.
FBI – criminal, civil, and military (negative results): The FBI’s IAFIS database was launched on July 28, 1999. So in 1997 this quote applies "Prior to this time, the processing of ten-print fingerprint submissions was largely a manual, labor-intensive process, taking weeks or months to process a single submission."
DMV databases are text based searches so, without a name, this is of no use.
Banks, and other private institutions, that were using fingerprints at that time did not include them in any local, state or national databases. Those are civil prints and therefore more privacy is expected. Without a name to search for, these are relatively useless.
Worldwide there are also databases maintained by such groups as Interpol and multi-country databases like EURODAC. Since there is no real reason to assume he is foreign there isn't much to discuss there.
So what can be done with his fingerprints now?
Well, remember post 9/11 we had a lot of changes in the ways biometrics are stored and shared in this country. Not knowing of any specific impediments, here are some thoughts:
Local and state level:
Retention periods for civil prints vary by local and state policies so we may be well beyond the expungement periods of any civil, or minor criminal, prints that had been on file. The civil prints at the state level do not necessarily ever go to the national level, so it's still worth a shot.
I don’t see the harm in trying neighboring state databases, such as New Jersey and Connecticut, with the hope that he had prints marked for retention. San Bernardino County area databases and the California’s state database could be checked as well, since we have the Twentynine Palms connection.
In addition, the Western Identification Network database (WIN - includes several western state databases) would be nice to submit his prints to. Maybe we would get lucky and somewhere there he had prints marked for retention.
National level:
Local law enforcement can resubmit the prints to the state bureau, which can resubmit his prints to the FBI NGI database and have them searched on a national level.
The FBI launched its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system in 2014. This is a leap forward from IAFIS and likely the best bet for this John Doe, as well as many other cases. NGI is one of three major national databases available to the FBI.
The FBI can also search the other two: the Department of Homeland Security’s IDENT database, and the Department of Defense’s ABIS database. There may need to be special requests for these searches that specify it is being done for ‘humanitarian’ purposes. Some 70% of the fingerprints found here are not replicated in any other databases.
NamUs is a national level system that is operated by the U.S Department of Justice. It includes two databases, one for missing persons and one for unknown persons (living and deceased). If our John Doe has a matching missing person's report on NamUs, it likely does not include fingerprints in the case file. Matching fingerprints in this system should automatically notify the case managers that they have a match.
General Conclusion:
The best case scenario for any case is to find out the person's name. That aside, fingerprints from cold cases require following the resubmission steps described below.
From: Postmortem Fingerprinting and Unidentified Human Remains (Forensic Studies for Criminal Justice) 1st Edition
by Marzena Mulawka (Author)
At every step the unknown prints should be: underlined as humanitarian searches (so they run against criminal, civil, and military prints), marked for retention, and specified that they are latent prints:
Well, it is highly unlikely he is any kind of real criminal. Those prints (depending on the crime) would have been in any of, or all three of, the first three databases. We know he is probably not listed in the missing person’s database of NamUs with prints on file. That is pretty much all we know.
The problems:
These issues are by no means exclusive to New York City. They exist in many jurisdictions and represent the balancing act between a citizen’s right to privacy and our need to identify our own citizens (alive or deceased). We also need to keep in mind the year(s) involved in these cases. What is available now was certainly not available then.
So, what wasn't checked? Well, here we go:
NYC – criminal and civil (negative results): We have 33 other cities with populations over 500k in the United States. None of those databases were checked.
NY State – criminal and civil (negative results): We have 49 other state databases and one multistate database (Western Identification Network, WIN). None of those were checked.
FBI – criminal, civil, and military (negative results): The FBI’s IAFIS database was launched on July 28, 1999. So in 1997 this quote applies "Prior to this time, the processing of ten-print fingerprint submissions was largely a manual, labor-intensive process, taking weeks or months to process a single submission."
- The inclusion of military fingerprints to IAFIS was still being processed well after 2000.
- It was not possible to submit prints in 1997 to the FBI and have them marked as ‘retainable’ (meaning to keep them and routinely run them against the database) so likely this case has never benefited from that technology.
- The FBI has a latent print unit for IAFIS that specializes in more sophisticated print analysis. Likely his prints were not automatically sent there without possible names to go by.
DMV databases are text based searches so, without a name, this is of no use.
Banks, and other private institutions, that were using fingerprints at that time did not include them in any local, state or national databases. Those are civil prints and therefore more privacy is expected. Without a name to search for, these are relatively useless.
Worldwide there are also databases maintained by such groups as Interpol and multi-country databases like EURODAC. Since there is no real reason to assume he is foreign there isn't much to discuss there.
So what can be done with his fingerprints now?
Well, remember post 9/11 we had a lot of changes in the ways biometrics are stored and shared in this country. Not knowing of any specific impediments, here are some thoughts:
Local and state level:
Retention periods for civil prints vary by local and state policies so we may be well beyond the expungement periods of any civil, or minor criminal, prints that had been on file. The civil prints at the state level do not necessarily ever go to the national level, so it's still worth a shot.
I don’t see the harm in trying neighboring state databases, such as New Jersey and Connecticut, with the hope that he had prints marked for retention. San Bernardino County area databases and the California’s state database could be checked as well, since we have the Twentynine Palms connection.
In addition, the Western Identification Network database (WIN - includes several western state databases) would be nice to submit his prints to. Maybe we would get lucky and somewhere there he had prints marked for retention.
National level:
Local law enforcement can resubmit the prints to the state bureau, which can resubmit his prints to the FBI NGI database and have them searched on a national level.
The FBI launched its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system in 2014. This is a leap forward from IAFIS and likely the best bet for this John Doe, as well as many other cases. NGI is one of three major national databases available to the FBI.
The FBI can also search the other two: the Department of Homeland Security’s IDENT database, and the Department of Defense’s ABIS database. There may need to be special requests for these searches that specify it is being done for ‘humanitarian’ purposes. Some 70% of the fingerprints found here are not replicated in any other databases.
NamUs is a national level system that is operated by the U.S Department of Justice. It includes two databases, one for missing persons and one for unknown persons (living and deceased). If our John Doe has a matching missing person's report on NamUs, it likely does not include fingerprints in the case file. Matching fingerprints in this system should automatically notify the case managers that they have a match.
General Conclusion:
The best case scenario for any case is to find out the person's name. That aside, fingerprints from cold cases require following the resubmission steps described below.
From: Postmortem Fingerprinting and Unidentified Human Remains (Forensic Studies for Criminal Justice) 1st Edition
by Marzena Mulawka (Author)
At every step the unknown prints should be: underlined as humanitarian searches (so they run against criminal, civil, and military prints), marked for retention, and specified that they are latent prints:
- Submit to local law enforcement database - If negative result, then
- Submit to state fingerprint database - If negative result, then
- Submit to FBI NGI (and latent print unit) - If negative result, then
- Submit to DHS - If negative result, then
- Submit to neighboring states - If negative result, then
- Submit to Interpol (as feasible)
- Upload to NamUs (if not already done)
Further Reading:
http://www.nij.gov/journals/256/pages/missing-persons.aspx
http://www.nij.gov/journals/256/pages/missing-persons.aspx#sidebar_federal
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/biometrics-and-the-future-of-identification/
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/jr000256.pdf
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Missing-in-America-A-National-Crisis-NamUs-Todd-Matthews-292456511.html
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/iafis/iafis
http://onin.com/fp/fphistory.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=QiKgBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA120&ots=m3MvWJcn-Y&dq=silent%20mass%20disaster%20over%20time&pg=PA120#v=onepage&q=silent%20mass%20disaster%20over%20time&f=false
http://namus.gov/about.htm
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/biometric-analysis/lpou
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/ngi
https://www.fbi.gov/foia/privacy-impact-assessments/iafis-ngi-interoperability-1
http://www.winid.org/winid/who/documents/WINServiceStrategyNovember2012Update.pdf
http://www.biometricupdate.com/201503/defence-department-continues-improving-abis-biometric-database
http://www.nij.gov/journals/256/pages/missing-persons.aspx
http://www.nij.gov/journals/256/pages/missing-persons.aspx#sidebar_federal
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/biometrics-and-the-future-of-identification/
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/jr000256.pdf
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Missing-in-America-A-National-Crisis-NamUs-Todd-Matthews-292456511.html
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/iafis/iafis
http://onin.com/fp/fphistory.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=QiKgBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA120&ots=m3MvWJcn-Y&dq=silent%20mass%20disaster%20over%20time&pg=PA120#v=onepage&q=silent%20mass%20disaster%20over%20time&f=false
http://namus.gov/about.htm
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/biometric-analysis/lpou
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/ngi
https://www.fbi.gov/foia/privacy-impact-assessments/iafis-ngi-interoperability-1
http://www.winid.org/winid/who/documents/WINServiceStrategyNovember2012Update.pdf
http://www.biometricupdate.com/201503/defence-department-continues-improving-abis-biometric-database