Technology and Communication Paper Essay Example

Technology and Communication Paper Technology affects the communication of specialized databases by allowing individual cities, states, or countries to store information on individuals and relay this information to and from different systems to identify an individual’s past criminal record. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) is one of the many types of computerized systems that officers can use to help provide information about a suspect. Live scan fingerprinting and the iris scan are both a new technologies that is incorporated into the AFIS systems. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) is a computer system that can log information for a city, state, or country. Most systems have the ability to connect with larger databases, such as the one used by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). The FBI calls their system IAFIS, which stands for Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. IAFIS is the said to be the largest biometric database in the world and contains fingerprints and criminal histories for over 70 million suspects and over 31 million civil prints (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, 2012). Each state can request further information about a suspect from IAFIS, which will tell if the suspect has a prior criminal history or if the suspect is wanted for a crime in another state. Fingerprints have been used for over 100 years to identify a suspect, however, in the past individuals were responsible for classifying the fingerprints, looking up an individual by name or state identification number, and comparing the fingerprints of a crime scene to hundreds or even thousands of fingerprint cards. The process of finding a match took many hours and several individuals. Today, with the help of computers, fingerprints can be scanned into AFIS and the computerized system can search through a single database in seconds, minutes, or hours depending on the amount of records