Fingerprinting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Fingerprinting - Essay Example The use of fingerprints is primarily important in identification of criminals in forensic sciences who has to have their fingerprints saved in the criminals database, but the drawback is the crime's scene prints distortion and difficulty in retrieval. Fingerprints are also an important asset to highly secure companies and banking systems. Such identifications with many others such as eye scan and voice recognition are used to verify a person's identity and cross-reference him. Finger Identification can be used on a more sophisticated level of security as mentioned by Tom Gillespie 2005; a fingerprint reader used as a switch, a standalone lock that uses a fingerprint instead of a keypad and a security case opened by a fingerprint reader. It is also was a suggested to use those identification marks present on the finger prints to help track kids when they are lost, though some parents do not agree on the principle of using the same technology used for criminals identification. This must not be an issue when the safety of the children is the main concern of all parents. (Lisa P. White) Many scientists came across finger prints discussing their presence and describing them in different manners, and some describing the patterns of them, but it was not till 1880 that Faulds had described their importance as personal identification marks through his studies and research. On 1882 Thompson was the first U.S citizen that has printed his thumb print to ensure ethnicity of a paper. And on 1883 Mark Twain identified the first criminal using fingerprint identification. Types & methods of obtaining finger prints According to Eric Brown, 1990, there are three types of finger prints; visible (also called patent prints), impression (also called plastic prints), and latent prints. All can be obtained but in different methods. Visible can be photographed directly, impression need special lightning to make it visible, latent need special methods to become visible by physical , chemical, and instrumental techniques. Latent finger prints are composed mainly of sweat and other organic compounds like amino acids, glucose, lactic acid, peptides, ammonia, riboflavin, and isoagglutinogens as well as inorganic chemicals like potassium, sodium, carbon trioxide, and chlorine. It is those chemicals that react by one of those techniques to help make the latent finger prints visible. (Eric Brown, 1990) A person with no prints Researchers recently unraveled two diseases that can actually cause a person to be finger print-less. The two diseases are Naegeli syndrome and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis (DPR) both caused by a defect in the keratin protein number 14. "The defect induces the body to mark cells in the upper layers of the skin for death. As a result, people with these afflictions lack fingerprints.." Those results were published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. (Scientists Unravel Mystery of People with No Fingerprints) Where does finger printing stand in the forensic sciences Finger printing left its impressions in forensic sciences over the years to be a helpful aid to humanity in many aspects. Many crime scene investigators start with this basic information collection as a start to help them have an initial starting point to their investigations. Finger printing was the first to