Considering fingerprint analysis is pseudoscience and almost entirely made up (along with most other "forensic science") [1] [2] we can assume LOTS AND LOTS of innocent people are caught with "fingerprint data"
>"There is some evidence that fingerprints are unique to each person, and it is plausible that careful analysis could accurately discern whether two prints have a common source, the report says. However, claims that these analyses have zero-error rates are not plausible; uniqueness does not guarantee that two individuals' prints are always sufficiently different that they could not be confused, for example. Studies should accumulate data on how much a person's fingerprints vary from impression to impression, as well as the degree to which fingerprints vary across a population. With this kind of research, examiners could begin to attach confidence limits to conclusions about whether a print is linked to a particular person."
>Considering fingerprint analysis is pseudoscience and almost entirely made up
Quite the stretch to go from "non-zero-error rates" to "made up pseudoscience" isn't it?
It's a problem if people are being convicted on fingerprint analysis alone. But as a piece of the puzzle, when combined with other evidence, what is the issue?
and you don't come to the attention of the police by being innocent so it's safe to assume you're guilty and watch the evidence appear. And this is why the advice is to say nothing whatsoever to police. Don't help them get the falsehoods out of their case anywhere but in front of a judge in a court. And the police may not be bad people or involved in organised crime.
All this tech makes a turnkey police state right there waiting. Who is going to turn that key before we dismantle it? Think of the children.
In the past, if a license plate was noted, you’d have to manually go through records. Now through automation and scale it’s instant. Should that be prohibited too?
The tech will improve. Fingerprint data from cards use to be high tech.
Also the William & Will West case was an older example of misidentifying by photography. Modern tech has improved dramatically and will get more and more precise. Why apply early 2000’s tech issues to the advancements made in the past 15-20 years?
Lie detectors are woefully unreliable, but PDs use them.
Forensic “matching” of bullets to guns is basically pseudoscience, but continues to be used in court to convict people.
Roadside drug analysis kits are less useful than dowsing rods, but get people arrested on a daily basis. People that can’t afford bail, and plead guilty just to get back to their lives, despite the fact that an actual defense attorney would have had the case tossed in the trash.
Previous experience suggests that police tech does not just “get better.” They can’t even progress past “disproven pseudoscience.” And the innocent people that have their lives messed with while waiting for the tech to catch up might not be indifferent to the process.
I have heard of it being bunkum, but not quite of the same ~caliber~ as fiber matching and bite-mark matching.
It can, at best, match ammo from the same machine-manufactured batch to a factory-stock model of gun. It automatically fails on hand-load cartridges, or ammo that the analyst cannot readily source.
When there is a match, the prosecutor might say "this bullet was fired from this gun", but the science says "a bullet similar to the one in evidence was marked and deformed in a similar fashion, when fired by the weapon in evidence (just as it would with every other factory-stock copy of this model of gun)".
It's like matching a nail to the hammer that drove it. If the test nail is already different from the reference nail, you cannot match it. If you have two or more identical hammers, you can't tell which one drove the nail. The hammer factory made thousands of identical hammers.
In most cases, the tests are likely saying "the most commonly sold type of ammunition was fired from the most popular model of gun of that caliber". It's the sort of thing that should probably be used exclusively as exculpatory evidence. I.e. this model of gun always leaves distinctive markings, such as from an off-center diamond-shaped firing pin, or from an uncommon rifling twist, that were not found on the bullets in evidence, so the gun in evidence could not have fired them. Otherwise, a gun substantially similar, with all the same machine-made parts, could leave the same marks, so you could never know for sure which one fired the bullets.
The only time it would be useful to convict is if someone used a unique, hand-made, gunsmithed gun to fire factory-made ammunition. And the number of (violent) crimes committed with that type of display-piece gun approaches zero, because they tend to be both expensive and less fit for use as a weapon than cheaper factory-built guns.
> Commission President Anthony Pacheco said Friday that he was highly concerned after learning police have arrested at least two innocent people because of faulty fingerprint analysis.
What happened to "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." As expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.
Seems you're willing to punish an innocent man and a guilty man just to make sure a committed crime is followed up with a conviction.
Innocent people are killed by the same murderers in both scenarios. In yours, they are also sometimes killed or imprisoned by the state and are therefore at more total risk.
How about the fact that those fingerprints Haven long been stolen and likely abused by all sorts of undergeound criminals? Even federal workers fingerprints were stolen in the OPM hack.
[1] http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?rec...
[2] https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12589/strengthening-forensic-sci...
>"There is some evidence that fingerprints are unique to each person, and it is plausible that careful analysis could accurately discern whether two prints have a common source, the report says. However, claims that these analyses have zero-error rates are not plausible; uniqueness does not guarantee that two individuals' prints are always sufficiently different that they could not be confused, for example. Studies should accumulate data on how much a person's fingerprints vary from impression to impression, as well as the degree to which fingerprints vary across a population. With this kind of research, examiners could begin to attach confidence limits to conclusions about whether a print is linked to a particular person."