Are Fingerprints Unique? 119
MattJ writes "There's an incredible article in LinguaFranca about fingerprints. Maybe they're not all unique after all. And maybe those fingerprint experts are not much more scientific than handwriting experts. Fascinating details."
Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
The New War Cry Of Forensics Expers (Score:1)
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
very funny..
Comment removed (Score:3)
Fingerprint Seeds (Score:1)
Could this? (Score:1)
The Myth of Fingerprints (Score:1)
Sorry.
Dan
Maybe they're not all unique after all. (Score:2)
The Motto of American Judges and Procecutors... (Score:1)
where's the conclusion? (Score:1)
Well, it's time to do the math.... (Score:5)
To guestimate, I suspect the real numbers are about 10^12:1 false matches, which is quite alarming, if there are 10^7 entries, one in 10,000 will be a false hit with someone totally at random. The false negative rate is probably closer to 1% and might be as high as 10%.
Does anyone have better numbers, after all, I'm just guessing at this point.
--Mike--
What is a proof anyway. (Score:1)
There is never any proof that is 100% watertight (other than in mathematics and other formal logic systems). The legal system will always have to settle for reasonable proof.
If an investigator picks up a suspect and his prints happen to match the perps, then you will have a hard time to prove you didn't do it. But remember it must also be proven that the prints that were found are indeed the criminals.
It's wery unlikly in my view that the fingerprint matching is ever the weakest link in the chain of evidence.
Well, I guess... (Score:3)
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
Finger Prints (Score:5)
$10 Bet... (Score:3)
Great. We're trusting a multi-variable analytical computer system that's as old as Pac Man... Especially considering that:
and
I could just picture the conversation in the lab at Lockheed International Conglomerate:
"Richard, I've been thinking...what about distortion from pressure on either the latent print or the test print, or both!" "Oh Sam, you know we only have 640KB of RAM to do our matrix multiplications in...and besides, the government's paying us a lot for this. We're gonna have one hell of a Christmas bonus..."
Consider this, too:
Great, they may as well be dowsing for water wells now... Okay, I bet $10 that the feebs' [fbi.gov] computer (AFIS) is a total fraud. The burden of proof, however, is on you...
This sucks. I'm going back to bed.
In 1999, marijuana [smokedot.org] killed 0 Americans...
Re:What is a proof anyway. (Score:2)
Oh yeah? Prove it, smart boy!
Well, why not test it? (Score:5)
Craftsmanship (Score:1)
The question is not whether fingerprints are globally unique -- as the article points out, given enough detail, they most certainly are, like all natural things.
The question is whether any two fingerprints differ enough for a smudged, low-detail, partial impression of a fingerprint to reliably match the one and not the other.
That is where the science ends and the craftsmanship begins.
Well, there ARE other methods for identification.. (Score:1)
Now, I'm not sure just what the accuracy is in the scanner, but let's assume for a moment that it's the same as "1 in 10000" that's being tossed around for fingerprints in this discussion.
At the same time, assume that the pattern of someone's Iris and their finger prints aren't linked in any way.
Combine the 2 and you've got a 1 in 10 billion chance of having duplicate records.
Dark Nexus
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:1)
You are missing the point. Such tests have been performed, just scan the article for "50K vs. 50K".
The point is not whether fingerprints are unique -- the point is how many fingerprints match any particular (low-detail, smudged, partial) impression of a fingerprint.
Re:What is a proof anyway. (Score:1)
Failing to falsify does not strengthen an argument. For example, prove that Unicorns don't exist. Nothing you can present will prove that they don't exist, therefor they must exist!
Combintorial Correction (Score:2)
a) That's 7,322,564 people in New York,NY (1990 US Census) with a rate of 1/10,000 gives approx. 732 similiar ones give or take a variance of 1/x^2, whatever x being. Maybe as many as 1000, as few as 500.
b) That's further assuming we discount all the transient workers coming into town & all the tourists. Which may double the population on a given day. A population doubling due to this would not just double the "similiar score" to 1464, but would be something on the order of, hmm... 732^2, or 535824. Wow.. half a million, because this is combinitorial. Suzie Q182 matches 1464 other fingers, and each of those 1464 other fingers have thier own set of 1464 matches, but not with 100% overlap. False positives tend to blow up.
In fact, you could prove that someone out there has two fingers that are similiar to another persons singular digit. I'm not sure how to finagle the numbers to find out if the two fingers would be rated as similiar or dissimiliar. There probly is a secondary rate preventing a person from having two matching fingers.
Now for some more fun, you give the assumption that "if the over 100 people with the same fingerprints in the country never set foot in the city" to determine what country your talking about. (all figures are Bistro-Math(tm), please don't nitpick, instead create your own cosmology)
100 people times 10,000 is 1 million plus a bit for the guy with the finger that lives in the town. Well, you don't live in Albania(3,490,435)
Basically, a rate of 1/10,000 is scientifically un exceptable. And since there is no "rate" since all mistakes are due to technician error, not error in the system (can you say Cult?) there is no way for it to be a science.
As long as you're on the Lingua Franca site... (Score:1)
What uniqueness do we have left? (Score:1)
Damn, my fingerprints aren't unique, my ideas aren't unique... at least my Slashdot nickname [slashdot.org] is completely unique.
Phew, I feel better!
That's the point, I believe (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:where's the conclusion? (Score:1)
But that's the point. There isn't anything conclusive one way or the other.
Please keep in mind the principle of "Innocent until proven guilty."
What procecutors are doing is asking juries to convict people soley on the basis of fingerprints which may not be a valid identification technique.
So what's actually being said is "He might be the owner of the fingerprints, but we can't be certain. Heck, we don't even know if you can identify people by fingerprints!" Do you really think someone should be convicted of a crime on that basis?
Oh ... and to those people out there who are thinking: "Well, we know he's a criminal; we just need the fingerprint match so we can lock him away." Why even bother with evidence? You've already made up your mind that he's guilty, you don't need the fingerprint matches to show that. What you should really be doing is lobbying congress to revoke all this nasty trial business (since all the criminals can get off on technicalities) and implement a system whereby we just simply lock away people we know are criminals.
Jonathan has the right idea (Score:1)
In many states, you get printed each time you are arrested.
Just by using an old set vs a new set for one suspect, you could then get a "Z" reference to other prints.
Since I have been printed 4 times in the last 5 years ( Professional Certffication and background checks) , I can tell you that the TX DPS has different imprints on my fingerprints and that they do differ. My girlfriend's prints are slowly disappearing, she's an EPA lab chemist. That in itself generates a "Z" factor. So there is a basis to run a true comparison test to determine the APIS DB's accuracy in matches.
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
A cop who lies in court should lose his pension. A cop who falsifies evidence should go to prison.
enter the criteria of falsifiability (Score:2)
The attempt to prove that a non-existant creature does not exist is what is known as an unfalsifiable statement. There is no possible way to prove that a non-existent being does not exist.
The correct approach in science and in philosophy is to start with a falsifiable statement (such as "Unicorns exist"). The more scientists and philosophers search for evidence of the existence of unicorns and fail, the more likely it becomes that unicorns do not exist.
have a day,
-l
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:2)
Just had fingerprinting done (Score:5)
I needed to be fingerprinted before they would give me my green card, what fascinated me was this machine they took my fingerprints on.
At first glance it looks like a photocopier gone haywire, with a largish monitor. This is where your fingerprint image gets projected. There are several squares of different sizes, and they look similar to the glass partition of an everyday photocopier.
No ink involved, He just asked me to lightly place my fingers on the glass, and he held my fingers at some points to keep them from jiggling (he was very exacting about it).
When he was satisfied, he brought the images of my prints up on the screen in front of us. He remarked "Well, no life of crime for you". He was referring to the fact that I had "excellent patterning". He remarked that "You have excellently defined fingertips" etc. etc. He then showed me the neatest thing he magnified my prints to the point that he could COUNT the skin pores between the whorls of my thumbprint
Actually I was impressed, since up til that point it had always involved me getting my fingers full of that stupid ink and having to roll them around on a piece of paper. That machine was much cooler.
And for the record, I don't have one :)
A double standard? (Score:3)
Does anyone else see a double standard here? And how can we help society to make better, objective scientific judgements, rather than just listening to demagogues?
Most of the time (Score:1)
The nice people at the FBI made it sound like this was a 1 in a billion chance (which, technically, would make it so there are 6 other people out there with the same finger prints as me!), and that it was a freak thing. I'm inclined to agree with that.
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
Yeah, 'cause we all know that if we had convicted OJ, it would have brought them back to life.
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Craftsmanship (Score:1)
most certainly are, like all natural things.
But when you scan them at a low enough resolution they all end up being the same. The trick is to adjust the resolution of the scan so the unique details show up.
The backlash of poor science© (Score:1)
This is causing significant backlash©
The growth of psychic hotlines, faith healing and other panaceas is at least partly due to poor science© If the bar isn't held high enough that only science can qualify many other things can get through©
Here in New Zealand there was a prominant case of a boy with cancer where the boy's parents rejected traditional therapy and went with some quantum vibration panacia© The boy died a couple of weeks ago© Many people are blaming the parents, but could they have any way of rating one over another© Both treatments were applied by people who said they would work©
There have been many cases where medicine has shown use of poor science© There are diseases that people have fought for years to have the medical community investigate them, let alone accept their existance© Many people distrust doctors these days©
This effect happens in other areas© People have commented that all the major advances in physics occur after the previous generation of physicists die out¥I can't claim to actually know that is true however
Scientists' reputations are declining in this world© One day I would like to see Philosophy of Science taught early at school© When everybody is throwing information at you claiming they are facts© Everybody needs to be able to evaluate whether or not whether or not that information comes from a reliable method©
snowflakes (Score:2)
election, fingerprints--symptomatic (Score:1)
As long as the people who fund voting machines and police labs don't understand what is necessary, the money for accurate scientific evaluations doesn't get allocated. And that comes ultimately down to scientific illiteracy.
It's ironic that the guy who likely will have to fix this, George "W" Bush, and his staff (including Jams Baker) have displayed such a stunning lack of scientific literacy themselves by proclaiming, without evidence, that "machine counts are more reliable".
Good article... (Score:2)
No two fingerprints the same? Weeeeell... let's not get carried away here.
The (extremely valid) point here is not that fingerprinting isn't useful, but that it is by no means an infallible method. If you have a suspect and their prints could not POSSIBLY match the ones from the crime scene, then you can be pretty sure this isn't your man. However, to say that the main structure of the ridges of the two prints is exactly the same, that some of the secondary characteristics match, and that overall this is without a doubt a match.... that's kind of sketchy.
Developmental biology is far from the nice, linear-type science the public seems to believe it is... Certain attributes of the organism at any stage of it's development can be approximated, but it's not always as simple as "gene X is present, so phenotype (trait) Y will be expressed". The future of the "designer baby" where parents could pick and choose their child's characteristics is far, far in the future (even then it wouldn't be exact). Why? Because... genes are like a set of very general rules... it's chaos theory at it's finest. Here is a system that obviously has some underlying order (to produce an organism with 2 eyes, antennae, whatever), but even barring gross mutation, prediction of the final results of an organism's development is still (at this point) an estimate, at best.
It would be impossible to say exactly how many hairs a mouse would have, their precise location, and what color each would be by only looking at the genes of the creature. There's innumerable chances for deviation. You can stick two similarly colored mice together and say; "these mice are similar", but until you had an exact, infallible catalog of every minute detail of the organism, you would have no empirical (scientific) basis for saying how similar they are, or even "these mice are exactly alike". Even exactly the same genes (identical twins/clones) produce different results if you look closely enough.
BUT... that's a far cry from an objective justification for the impossibility of 'lighting striking the same place twice';P. The same 'proof' was used when "they" once said that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. Whiiiich... after someone did some serious, scientific researcg on the matter, later turned out to be bullshit;). Much in the same vein, "the identical twins had different prints" argument means jack; two people could have different sets of genes in respect to their fingerprints, exist in different environments, and it's still not impossible that they would end up with extremely similar (or even indistinguishable) fingerprints. There's a quite a few people in the world; see "Europeans descended from 10 males" a few days back... even though America's a large place, those ancestors have passed on a little bit to everyone with caucasian ancestry - that's a lot of people with the same daddies/similar genes;). Is it that hard to imagine that, even though the odds are extremely small, that two sets of prints, taken right off the two specimen's fingers, could be similar to the point that they would appear exact?
Now for the coup-de-gras... the fingerprints in crime scenes aren't lifted straight off someone's fingers in a controlled manner. There isn't some fingerprinting technician dipping the criminals fingers in grease and carefully applying them to the doorknob or whatever. As mentioned, smudging, processing, and method of extraction result in very loosely defined fingerprint specimens. Is it crazy to think that you can, 100% of the time, say with 100% certainty that "These fingerprints belong to this individual"? You bet. Should fingerprinting be forgotten, then? No, it's still useful, but... I think the courts have led people to believe that fingerprints are the end-all-be-all of forensic evidence. If America's going to claim that it's judicial system operates by "innocent 'till proven guitly", we might as well make the extra effort to make sure that the methods that we use to prove someone guilty are as sound as possible, or the system quickly becomes a farce.
Re:Craftsmanship (Score:1)
Re:enter the criteria of falsifiability (Score:1)
Then should it still be called... (Score:1)
Re:Jonathan has the right idea (Score:1)
That is all very interesting, but besides the point of the article, which questions the science behind the FPE's claim that any two impressions of a fingerprint can be reliably matched.
The reason why this science is questioned is because the FPE's take overlapping, smudged, partial impressions, then rely primarily on their their experience and intuition to determine how great the likeness between the impression and the known fingerprint should be.
Re:What is a proof anyway. (Score:2)
Here's how it works. The statement "All crows are black" is logically equivalent to the statement "All non-black objects are non-crows."
So, assuming there's a finite universe of objects -- take that one up with the cosmologists -- I can estimate the probability that there exists a non-black object that is, in fact, a crow, simply by counting non-black objects, and looking to see crows among them. A good place to start is out on my lawn; I'll go through and see if any of the green objects sprouting from the soil out there is a crow.
Nope: they're all weeds...I mean, blades of grass. That's still more evidence for the thesis that all crows are black.
To carry this through to your thesis that there are no unicorns, the statement "There are no unicorns" is logically equivalent to "All objects are 'non-unicorns'". I can't acquire any evidence of the first one directly, but I can provide evidence of the second.
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:1)
I still don't see what such a test would contribute.
What the article questions is the science behind the method used by FPE's.
According to the article, what happens is that FPE's get a (partial, smudged) fingerprint impression and rely on their experience and intuition to determine whether or not the amount of similarities found is sufficient for identification. When the FBI tells them what to look for, suddenly their judgment sways in the other direction.
This has very little to do with the extent to which known fingerprint impressions match eachother.
Quick Disproof, by implication (Score:1)
Iff a stronger form of evidence is added to a chain containing only fingerprint matching, then fingerprint matching is the weakest link.
Iff a stronger form of evidence is added to a chain containing fingerprint matching and any stronger evidence, then fingerprint matching is the weakest link.
Re:Quick Disproof, by implication (Score:1)
*sighs* (Score:1)
See? Up at the top there? The part where I said it isn't useful for forensics?
People should learn how to read and pay a bit of attention before they try to learn how to make witty or sarcastic replies...
Dark Nexus
The birthday paradox (Score:4)
Even if you accept this figure of one in 64 billion the birthday paradox predicts that you can expect to find an identical pair of fingerprints in a database of sqrt(64e9) fingerprints which is just a little over 250,000. I believe the FBI fingerprint database is significantly larger than that. After this "threshold" of sqrt(N) is crossed the number of duplicates starts to rise quite sharply as the database size increases.
----
Irises are more unique than fingerprints. (Score:1)
Whereas with all the fingerprint scanners I've seen you need a PIN or some other info, so that the computer knows which record to compare with the biometric input.
This is for biometric access, not for forensic, but it should give you an idea on how relying 100% on partial fingerprint smudges really isn't a good idea.
Cheerio,
Link.
Re:Could this? (Score:2)
Re:The Motto of American Judges and Procecutors... (Score:1)
CAN WE HAVE CRACK REHAB ON AISLE 17? (Score:1)
What is the point of this post? He states the obvious, then goes on to throw out some bullshit numbers that he admits are bullshit (and are wrong anyway (10^12/10^7 = 100,000)).
I don't mind the guy looking like a fool, but it wastes everyone's time when idiot moderators mod it up. "Huyuck, garsh, this guy posted numbers, he must be insightful!"
Bah.
Re:Finger Prints (Score:1)
Fingerprint Uniqueness Will Never Be Overturned (Score:2)
Think of all of the tens of thousands, if not millions of cases that would have to be looked at again if it were happen. The resources for that simply don't exist.
Rich...
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
the problem with DNA evidence in the OJ trial (Score:1)
IIRC, the reason the DNA evidence in the OJ simpson murder trial was unconvincing to the jury was because the defense proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the labs involved did not adhere to the standards necessary to proved that the correct sample had been analyzed.
The defense did not attack the concept of DNA analysis but the methods that were used in that particular case of DNA analysis.
And as bad as it is to possibly let a guilty man go free over a technicality, I would rather see the occasional guilty party go free than allow the police to abuse their powers with impunity. It was the LAPD that screwed up what was pretty close to an open and shut case.
have a day,
-l
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:2)
Exactly. That's why a test is needed.
According to the article, what happens is that FPE's get a (partial, smudged) fingerprint impression and rely on their experience and intuition to determine whether or not the amount of similarities found is sufficient for identification. When the FBI tells them what to look for, suddenly their judgment sways in the other direction.
No, the article simply gave a couple of anecdotal stories about FPE's being swayed by suggestion. If in general, that's how FPEs work, then it is obvious that they are no more useful than the Psychic Friends Network. However, perhaps those particular FPEs were simply incompetent, and good FPEs make their decisions in a more objective fashion. A test would let us see whether FPEs can really do what they say they can, or simply give the answer the cops want to hear.
This has very little to do with the extent to which known fingerprint impressions match each other.
It has everything to do with it if the FPEs are the ones making the decisions.
Don't confuse probability with actuality (Score:1)
The likelihood that something exists is quantifiable by a non-binary number (i.e. a percentage). The actuality of whether or not something exists is only expressable by a binary number (0 or 1, either it exists or it doesn't).
The likelihood (or probability) that something exists is directly proportional to the amount of evidence we have that that something exists.
have a day,
-l
Re:Finger Prints (Score:2)
First, the US has about 270M people. That means there are 27,000 other people with similar prints.
Second, within a city, there might be a higher percentage of people with similar prints than you might expect. Have you ever heard of the birthday problem in statistics? Given a group of 25 people, there's a greater than 50% likelihood that two people share the same birthday. Perhaps a statistician could follow-up with the correct analysis of these figures.
But it's certainly not 100 other people in the country, and it's probably even higher than you would think.
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:2)
On another level, if it really is scientific (and please don't confuse scientific with useful in the real world), there really ought to be some repeatable technique that is used to do this. If there is no such technique, fingerprint identification is not science, even if it is a useful method of identification.
fingerprints (Score:2)
Oh no! (Score:1)
---
Re:What is a proof anyway. (Score:1)
Or even the existence of people if you accept Descartes' _Meditations_ but exclude the ontological argument, but that's a bit much...
Re:Fingerprint Seeds (Score:3)
That's the point of the article -- we don't really know those odds, as all the popular numbers seem to have been created mostly by guessing.
Re:Could this? (Score:1)
Sorry(off topic)Rant
Signal to noise ratio (Score:3)
This is easily verified with standard scientific practices. Grab 10,000 people and give them a metal ball and have them handle it for awhile (without telling them why), then grab clear fingerprint impressions. Give the balls to examiners whose job it is to grab as many fingerprint impressions as they can. Put all this into a database, then start pulling out fingerprints and having examiners match them up.
What is the error rate whereby fingerprints were matched incorrectly?
As I see it, the real problem is that people can only think in black or white. The focus of this little question has been if fingerprints are unique or not. The average person isn't mentally equiped to think in terms of "How unique are they?", a vast grey area. Science can never answer black-vs-white questions, but they can certainly measure grey.
Re:Finger Prints (Score:1)
Re:Good article... (Score:1)
However, identical twins and clones have different fingerprints. This is because the fingerprints are not fully encoded in the genes, and the cell development depends on the growth inside the uterus. They end up with similar fingerprints, but not identical.
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Paper cuts? (Score:2)
Re:Paper cuts? (Score:1)
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:1)
However, perhaps those particular FPEs were simply incompetent, and good FPEs make their decisions in a more objective fashion.
Perhaps there are no objective criteria. They cannot even seem to agree on the number of minutae that should match.
But hey, what do I know. You got me curious, though. Maybe a lack of imagination on my part, but how would a test like the one you're proposing be able to verify the methods used by FPE's?
Re:awwwwww im sorry... (Score:1)
That was the point. It was an attempt at humor.
Re:Well, it's time to do the math.... (Score:2)
Re:The Motto of American Judges and Procecutors... (Score:1)
Re:Well, why not test it? (Score:2)
Well, yes, but if FP evidence is to be considered useful, I think there needs to be a demonstration that the different styles of analysis yield the same results in the end.
But hey, what do I know. You got me curious, though. Maybe a lack of imagination on my part, but how would a test like the one you're proposing be able to verify the methods used by FPE's?
I was thinking of something along the lines of the tests that skeptics give to people claiming paranormal powers. For example, do different FPEs find that the same impression matches the same person's prints; can the same FPE correctly identify different impressions from the same person as actually being from the same person, etc. A high rate of error would suggest that either there are many incompetent FPEs, or that their methods simply aren't reliable.
Re:Just had fingerprinting done (Score:1)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
The tower commission showed he signed the Nov. 18th paper to sell tomahawk missles to the Iranians... The last time I remember a US citizen selling military capabilities to a country who's primary foreign policy was the destruction of the United States was the Rosenbergs...
and they go the chair.
Re:Well, it's time to do the math.... (Score:1)
Partial print? That can mean a lot of different things. Did they say how many features were distinct on each print? Did they produce an image to compare against the file? (Images contain a lot more information than the retrieval extract!
I would probably be swayed by one exact match of an image with a trusted copy of even a third of a finger. Of course, I'd want to do an optical subtraction to see that they actually did match rather than just being close.
N.B.: This rarely works! Finger size isn't constant. But I'd be more skeptical if they had to scale one of the images to get a perfect match. And marks of various sorts appear on the fingers as aging happens. Etc. So one would need to know when the original prints were taken, etc.
P.S.: I am NOT an expert in the field. And things may have changed since I browsed it a few decades ago. But the real reason that most fingerprint evidence is bad is the quality of the retrieved print, of which partial is only one of the problems. Consider also: smear, stretch (what was the surface?), scratches (a kind of partial). Of course, if the print was left in warm parafin, then you're in luck. But that, of course, is quite rare.
P.P.S.: The entire theory of the jail system is faulty. It creates a social order that reinforces criminal behavior. It also encourages sadism by both the jailors and the "top cons". See the partial experiment at Stanford during the '70s. (They had to cancel it because the students acting as jailors started to go out of control!) Jail should not act to reinforce either criminal associations or dominant/submissive behavior. I should act so as to destroy criminal social groupings. The best answer I've come up with is true isolation (meaning, esp., that the jailors can't get at them). I favor welding them into a cell with a bed, and exercise machine, and a computer with a modem. No outgoing phone calls. Good encryption for e-mails from the lawyer (no telephone, but private contact with the lawyer must be possible. So have a restricted list of folk that can contact by e-mail. And the lawyer has the right to directly transfer zip disks (so long keys can easily be used without being subject to interception at key creation time). Food delivered by Bellamy tube. The lawyer must, not may, be present whenever the cell is unsealed. And short sentences. (Short, of course, is relative.)
Just my thoughts.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:What is a proof anyway. (Score:1)
Was that a unicorn?
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
why cop's like fingerprints (Score:2)
Re:Paper cuts? (Score:1)
Actually, even sanding your fingerprints of creates no permanent change. (They grow back quickly into the same pattern.) I do understand that there is a technique involving high speed wire brushes that replaces the current pattern with a linear one. But you would need to be truly desperate, and the fact that you intentionally removed the prints would be obvious.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:1)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Read the article, people (Score:3)
The problem is that exact complete fingerprints aren't used in forensic investigation. Mere fragments are. And not just fragments; sloppy fragments, read by making impressions with the detective's dust and transfered onto paper. The question is therefore whether those fragments are unique relative to other fragments, given the additional fudge factor in how they're read, and whether the use of fragments instead of complete fingerprints is sufficient.
People need to work on their critical-reading skills.
Re:enter the criteria of falsifiability (Score:1)
If it worked your way, then we'd all be running around spouting out "Flying pink invisible elephants exist!" and "There's an ultra-magneto-opto-electro-infrared ray coming out of my anus", since no one's ever bothered to try and disprove those statements...well, AFAIK, anyway. And, according to your comment, since no one's "searched for the evidence" of these things and, thus, no one's "fail[ed]", it must be likely that these things do exist. (Since by failing, they are making it less likely that they exist, we must start with a 100% assumption rate, right?)
You're probably right about Philosophy, however, since Philosophy pretty much deals with the unprovable.
nitpick [off topic] (Score:1)
coup-de-gras
It's coup-de-grace. "Gras" means fatty or oily in French.
I'm sick of people misusing coup-de-grace. It means "stroke of mercy" and the term was originally associated with executions. For instance, in a firing squad execution the riflemen shoot the victim and then someone finishes off the victim with a coup-de-grace, that is, a pistol shot to the head. So it's not just a fatal blow, it's a humane act too.
Re:Well, it's time to do the math.... (Score:1)
Fun with probabilities (Score:2)
Suppose that there are N objects in the universe, and I've observed none of them. What's the probability that at least one of them is a unicorn? Well, given that I know nothing about the relative likelihood of Unicorn-ness among objects, the most likely a priori estimate of the likelihood of a Unicorn is given by quantifying across all possible predicates on the Universe, and computing the probability that IsAUnicorn(x) is true for some x. (After all, the IsAUnicorn predicate is just another predicate. I don't know its characteristic function, but it's got one.) Then it's easy: the Universe is finite, and so there are only finitely many predicates on it, and (drumroll please)...exactly one of those predicates has no elements!
So, our estimate of the probability that there exists at least one Unicorn, given that we have no evidence speaking to the question, either way, is 1 - 2^(-N), where N is the number of objects in the Universe. Thus, it is very, very likely that there exists a Unicorn, in default of any evidence -- but it is not quite certain.
Re:The Motto of American Judges and Procecutors... (Score:2)
o i thought it were
out of sight out of mind
of course under the new Moron administration itll be
what, me worry?
yours wdk
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:2)
Bill Kurtis pointed out the other night that in California, a false witness in a capital trial faces a capital trial of his own. But of course the racist LA prosecutors would never bother to charge a fellow good white racist cop for framing (or at least buffing up the evidence against) an uppity rich nigger, never mind set him up for death.
Kurtis tried to play it as though it made conspiracy unlikely. But conspiracy was not necessary for the evidence tampering. The only conspiracy on the prosecution of the Simpson was an amalgam of inflated egos.
I was amazed they were so cocksure as to try him for both murders together... they should've kept one in reserve in case they f*cked up like they did. Then they whiningly blame the jury, who they'd approved. But the jury did its job: there was lots of room for reasonable doubt, especially (to me) in the vaunted "scientific" evidence... to drag this back to the topic at hand.
As I understood what was presented... I refused to watch the trial voraciously; all I saw were snips in evening news and the presentation of the verdict, and documentaries... the DNA evidence went something like this: "this sample show this little marker, which occurs in fraction X of humans ... and it shows that little marker, which occurs in fraction Y ... thus only XY of humans have the combination, and the possibility of there being another person matching this sample is practically nil! You must convict!"
My problem is double: a) how do they know X and Y? When was my DNA sampled, or that of anyone else I know? When were the billion-plus Chinese sampled? (Or are they ignorable for the Simpson trial, which merely begs the question of who isn't ignorable, and were they scientifically sampled?)
And b) how do they know these markers are statistcally independant, that XY is actually their fraction for the population? While I'm willing to grant they may know X and Y well enough, the statistical indepedance (or lack thereof) takes much more analysis to know than than I believe has been done. The prosecution would have to go into serious background to make their "scientific" evidence credulous to me. (And they would have had to handle their case evidence scientifically... a grad student wouldn't get a masters based on labwork of that quality; that anyone's life hung on such bullshit makes a strong argument against capital punishment.)
No... the Simpson jury had ample room for reasonable doubt as far as I can tell, and whining about it is just sour grapes. The prosecution got full of its own importance and deserved to lose the case if that's the best they could do.
Re: Off-topic -- Jails (Score:2)
I agree that jails are merely almost isolated and very unhealthy social systems that reinforce the very worst behavior in both guards and prisoners. But isolation cannot teach anyone how to alter their behavior; it is used, sparingly, with children because a "time-out" gives them time to reflect rather than react. After childhood is over, the qualities of imagination and openness which make time-outs useful are almost always stunted, particularly in the types of persons who end up (justly or not) in prisons. I certainly would not want prisoners who had been held in complete isolation released into my society again after a "short" term!
We have learned a lot over the hundreds of years we have been locking up criminals, the insane, "delinquent" and "incorrigible" children, and other troublesome types. Unfortunately, we put almost nothing of what we collectively know into solving the problem of violent behavioral deviance. Why? The same reason we don't bother to raise children properly (at least paying attention!); nurse ill persons properly (that is, caring for them, trying to help them rest and sleep so their bodies can heal themselves); or teach properly: It's a lot of work! Hard work... work that requires love. (Love is an active, transitive verb -- seeking the good of the other; it's not some mushy emotion.)
Except in the case of violent offenders, the best technical solution for many crimes is probably an unbreakable monitoring bracelet and frequent supervision, with the offender remaining in touch with family, employment, etc. This is why the modern trend is to release prisoners into half-way houses before their sentence is completely over: They need routines, social contacts, a monitored transition into daily life.
Another misguided headline. (Score:2)
They simply claim that, according to principles of science, it is merely an *assumption* that no two fingerprints are the same. It is not a FACT.
They call into question not whether or not fingerprinting is of use, but whether or not fingerprint evidence should be taken as absolute. They cite the lack of an acknowledgement of an 'error rate', as any scientific method must have.
The point is, courts will jail people for life on fingerprint evidence, yet no modern (or historical) scientific study has *ever* been done to determine how accurate this is. No proper error rate studies have been done. They never take a thousand people and get them to leave prints all over different things, then lift them, and test to see how things work.
Re: Off-topic -- Jails (Score:2)
Reminds me of the old guy in The Shawshank Redemption. They let him out after many decades of "rehabilitation". He had been so isolated from society, so totally aloof, that he could not bear living in the foreign real world. So he hung himself.
Sometimes it just seems easier to jam our problems in a small dark hole and ignore them instead of actually trying hard to fix them.
Re:Fingerprint Uniqueness Will Never Be Overturned (Score:2)
Did you ignore what I read or simply not read it at all?
MY CONCLUSION, was that the CJ system won't likely SUDDENLY decide that fingreprints aren't very unique for the reason stated in my previous post.
That conclusion has NOTHING to do with my personal views or for whom I voted. What I would do is likely DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED to what the system will do.
And people wonder why our standardized test scores are as bad as they are... based on posts like this idiot AC's it's no surprise.
Learn to ACTUALLY read... as opposed to mouthing the words.
Rich...
Legal defintion of science (Score:2)
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