News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

New FBI technology being used by city police

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Five police agencies around the U.S. have been utilizing a handheld, fingerprint-based biometric scanner as part of an FBI pilot program of its FBI Next Generation Identification System, according to a Pittsburg Post Gazette article.

The new system works by increasing a speed at which a state or city police force can get federal criminal information on an individual by digitally sending fingerprint samples from their devices to the FBI’s database to check for outstanding warrants, terrorist ties and past sex offenses.


The device, called the Repository for Individuals of Special Concern (RISC), was designed to replace the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System that’s been in use by the FBI and police agencies around the country since 1999. While the RISC system depends on fingerprint data for now, it has been designed to incorporate other biometric data such as iris scans or face recognition data as the technology comes into use in policing.

In addition to increasing speed and ease of matching persons of interest to the FBI database, the RISC system has also increased its accuracy from 92% to 99.6%. Additionally, the old system is being taxed as its was designed to handle 62,000 requests daily but is now processing 200,000 whereas the new system is capable of up to 900,00 daily requests.

Other possible inclusions into the RISC system in the future include gait biometrics, or the unique way in which an individual walks or scent biometrics.

Read the full story here[end] 

Vision-Box, a biometrics solutions provider, has come out with an automatic border control e-gate that supports multimodal biometric authentication.

This new e-gate is a thin system that contains vb i-match, a single sourced design that is modular and flexible and can be adapted to business requirements and infrastructure constraints that would otherwise disrupt passenger flow. It has the ability to cope with industry standards such as ICAO. The e-gate supports iris, fingerprint and facial biometrics.

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The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia breached the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act when it offered to help police agencies identify participants in the Vancouver riots following the city’s loss in the 2011 NHL Stanley Cup finals via their face recognition technology, according to a Canadian Underwriter article.

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Two Texas police departments have successfully used live fingerprint scans to serve a warrant in conjunction with a 15-year-old murder case.

The Carrollton and Lewisville, Tex. police departments used Plano-based Mentalix Inc.’s Submit live scan system to nab the suspect, Danny Elenilson Osorio. Lewisville police officers stopped Osorio in March on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Osorio gave a fake name and birth date, and police arrested him and took him to the Lewisville jail.

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M2SYS Technology has released an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) that enables the storage, search, retrieval, processing and editing of biometric data and subject records. The new system is built on multi-modal architecture, enabling users to combine the biometric matching of a fingerprint with that of an iris, face or palm print.

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