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FBI Boosts Servers For Faster Criminal Searches
coondoggie writes "The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division has awarded Lockheed Martin a $16 million contract to upgrade its central repository for criminal justice information services. 'The CJIS division operates national-level crime data systems that furnish name checks, fingerprints, criminal history data and other information to law enforcement officials. Keeping its systems on the leading edge should help CJIS with its goal of delivering getting timely and relevant criminal justice information to the FBI and all others in the law enforcement community. The new and upgraded servers will be part of the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.'"
Well, the FBI wasted over $100 million on the Virtual Case File project, so I'm okay to let them play around with a mere $16 million however they want.
In seriousness, speeding the results of criminal checks is a useful goal. Now all we need to do is make sure that the databases are filled with the correct information, and we'll be all set.
Is a lousy $16 million contract news? Give me a break. Most big companies sneeze $16 million in IT expenses every day.
Cut the political and "big-brother-gonna-get-ya" crap, editors. This is a complete non-story. They are upgrading. Gosh. Nobody ever does that. And how many Slashdot stories ridiculed the FBI for spending billions on their failed IT re-alignment?
Stop the Boogey-Man stories and let's talk Nerd.
Moe
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Not the people I normally associate with this type of application. Makes me wonder if they will deliver a flight control system adapted to work as a criminal justice information service.
But then, perhaps they are more diverse than I thought.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
I wonder if they will have my fingerprints from the DARE program in 6th grade on the system...?
Not everyone can access FBI records directly, so this won't increase non-governmental background checks (which typically use data collected by private sources). But it WILL cause innocent people being held under suspicion of being a fugitive to be released faster. The data is being accessed anyway -- may as well do it quickly to minimally inconvenience those who shouldn't be inconvenienced.
The new and upgraded servers will be part of the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
Does anyone else smell a bullshit cover story or is it just me? This big fuss over what, 470 million fingerprints? I could fit that on my laptop.
The NSA already has all of this information stored and indexed anyways. Why not just partner up with them? Shouldn't be too hard to integrate since the NSA will already have their hands in the FBI network to police it (according to http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/22/0340219).
(it's funny... laugh)
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
They got nothin' on the NSA: "NSA's budget for electricity exceeds US$31 million per year, making it the second largest electricity consumer in the entire state of Maryland."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsa
Google for "inslaw".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
FBI Boosts Servers
anyone else see the word 'boost' as 'steal' ?
maybe a better subject line could have been chosen.
(or, well, maybe you did mean that?)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yes, they've been involved in some Constitutionally sketchy stuff. But a lot of their work *IS* really catching ordinary criminals. Not even terrorists or keeping files on "political" people. People who break into houses, rob and kill; serial killers; escaped prisoners, etc.
-b.
And the solution is very simple: abolish plea bargaining and require a speedy jury trial on anything that anyone is charged with. If the State actually has to try all charges, the practice of charging people guilty of minor offenses with everything on the books that MIGHT stick will stop very rapidly.
Are they talking about USD or CDN?
(CJIS) Division today awarded Lockheed Martin a $16 million contract to upgrade its Hewlett Packard Superdome Unix servers.
That ensures that FEMA will never find them w/o help from Anderson Cooper.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Government officials should be investigated, charged and prosecuted by a separate disinterested party that can not be threatened or influenced by government officials.
The failure by Fairfax County Virginia DA Robert Horan is a prime example. He recently refused to charge 2 cops that killed unarmed non-violent citizens. In these instances if the rolls had been reversed and cops were killed in the same manner he would have gone for the death penalty or life without parole.
Only those with something to hide pay them any attention.
Said like only an Anonymous Coward could!
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Source. The FBI is an agency that desperately needs to have a president come in and clean house, firing managers, devolving authority back to field agents and other measures that would help to clean out the bureaucratic nightmare.
When someone discusses the local police department personnel, I think of people trying to protect me and fight crime. When they upgraded their radio system to communicate better I considered that a good thing.
But when I think of the FBI, I don't see them that way. I see an orgnization that appears to be a threat to my privacy and basic rights and fredoms. I don't think this is how it should be, but there it is. So things like this just worry me more.
I don't see the FBI getting better at what they do as being a good thing for me. Anyone else feel this way?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"The killer's calling you from inside the (white) house!"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I agree the GP has the wrong end of the stick but his post is factual (see my reply to it above), and contains no ad-homs that I can see. Modding it flaimbait just adds to the "political crap".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Plea bargaining is a good thing. It allows us to convict criminals more readily whether they be senators who solicit sex in bathrooms or football players who kill dogs.
I agree about the speedy trial, however, when charing people with multiple counts usually a single trial is done. So they *do* charge them with everything. Habeas corpus and due process are not impeded by this.
FBI management (I think) is now on Rev5 in 7 years or less,
FBI management as good as most (thank god not all) management
in most governments.
National Whitehouse to local doghouse DemRep... management
can spend money and make stupid and irresponsible decisions.
Elected or appointed the bosses are vindictive losers and
petty fools. The pack-mules and worker-bees in the field
and cubical are the sources of all performance and success
from which the show-dogs take credit.
I remember reading about many different big multi$M contracts
over many decades that suffered extremely expensive questionable
success, and senior management types were awarded financially
for amazing spin-facts and plausible-truths, then were promoted
for being management successes.
We ain't got a meritocracy in the USA, and plutocrat spin-democracy
supports corporatist-welfare, while ignoring public welfare, and
generating a failing economy and destroying national security.
I am old enough, I don't worry about it much, I'll be dead by a decade
before the implosion of the Corporate States of America (CSA) where
there will be complete national public equality as serfs for the CSA.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
And here, for all these years, we here at /. always claimed those stupid "Turbo" buttons on the front of our PC's were meaningless. Leave it to the FBI to prove us all wrong!
Error:
I know they do, I know someone who works for them.
Since when do they do IT?
They're using their grammar skills there.
US notches world's highest incarceration rate
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You don't WANT criminal conviction to be easy. And plea bargaining has another unintended effect: it causes people to plead guilty to stuff that they didn't do. Let's say if you were falsely arrested for murder, and didn't have money for an attorney other than a public defender. "You can either cop to manslaughter and get 10 years, or we try you for murder and there's a chance you'll fry." Which choice would you take? Sure? Even if you weren't too educated and considered yourself powerless against the State? Plea bargaining is often used as a way to bully people into pleading guilty for something, and therefore the prosecutors can be seen to be closing cases, even if the wrong person is convicted.
Also, plea bargaining, as I said before, encourages higher (and generally unfair) initial charges. If DAs knew that the higher charges would go to trial and generally not stick, they'd be less likely to levy them. Remember, even if a felony charge gets dropped, it can stay on your record as an arrest.
I may add that juries should be allowed three verdicts: guilty, not guilty, and malicious prosecution -- under which a higher court would have the option of investigating the conduct of the arrest and trial.
-b.
There is a difference between a lookup database and an open-ended search database. It is relatively easy to save and retrieve data based on an individual using say a social security number or drivers license. However, it is a much bigger problem to do things such as list all crime cases where a thief with a green dragon tattoo drove off in a white Chevy Impala.
The first can use regular indexes, while the second requires high-end hardware and probably mass sequential searches for nation-wide searches. Plus, that information may be in different formats in different areas.
Table-ized A.I.
(sarcasm noted BTW)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"Do no evil", and all that ...
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
if this thing going to make the world is safe enough because the damn grading technologies? how they gonna be if in the reality they cant catch a thief, how this thing going to happen
Everywhere the police complain about the speed and most likely blame the FBI. Too bad they can't see the slow software running in their own state IT departments. Speed and storage (3 years of transactions need to be on file and searchable) are what are suffering now - even if the FBI did all libXML + C for everything they still have a bunch of Java clients connecting and taking their sweet old time downloading data.
My friends cat sneezed 400 dollars in IT the other day. He just put the sucker together, booted it up, cat looked over the edge, sneezed... and the spark was fantastic. Managed to kill the Mobo and the CPU.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
5 words: Take them off the net.
Do not allow these servers to be in contact with any computers on the net. Install updates and software manually. Withdraw information via hardcopies (portable harddrives, flashdrives, etc...) if you need them on computers also connected to the tubes. In the meantime, get your important data off the web.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
After the government has turned the entire USA population and all tourists into virtual suspects, it now needs more computing power to churn through all the garbage data it's producing.
Government and good IT spending just doesn't happen.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
You are a Troll.
Yet, you start with "probably Java" and finish with "it is XML".
Don't forget that they could always use a C XML parser in Java.
See System.load().
Google for "coleslaw".
(Sorry,couldn't resist. I lived next to one for three years)
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Not expected to be complete until 2001, The FBI says Sentinel will deliver an electronic information management system...
You don't think information's a weapon?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why would they want criminals to be able to search their servers faster?
information is never a weapon. How they use it makes it a weapon
They're using their grammar skills there.
You don't think the Government is evil? Well one night, when you're asleep, the government is gonna get ya. They're gonna get ya!
From 2001 to 2003 I worked for the Rhode Island Department of Attorney General as the Director of I.T.
At that time there were two things going on. First was the box that sat in the back of the computer room with all sorts of encryption hardware and it's own frame-relay connection. This was to allow us to connect to the CJIS network. The second part was the Interstate Identification Index.
In the past the FBI used to hold all fingerprint records. What they did with the advent of Automated Fingerprinted Identification Systems (AFIS) is push the burden onto the states. Rhode Island uses Connecticuts AFIS. But the criminal history dips hit that CJIS network to see if an active record in any state exists and then returns the information. This is also based on positive matches on a ten-print scan.
But here is where it gets interesting. The criminal history database was housed on an IBM RS/6000 under Oracle. To get our III data to the FBI we had to do an export. Well, the tapes and tape drives we had were of the Metal-Oxide variety and the FBI couldn't read the tapes. We ended up burning a set of 6 CD's with all the data they'd requested.
But we've long been told of the charlie-foxtrot that FBI and IRS systems became, but I've worked with many CJIS folks and they were competent people.
Nonsense. None of those are federal crimes.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I can only say what I hear. "How come this stuff is slower than Cobol on a mainframe?" Part of the reason is XML but those that use XML with C do not have the same degradation of performance. Those that use Java are struggling.
You don't have to believe it if you don't want to. Yet there it is like a fisherman holding an extinct fish... like that would ever happen.