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FBI Boosts Servers For Faster Criminal Searches

Posted by Zonk on from the we're-all-thrilled-for-them dept.

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.'"

4 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. 16 million here, 100 million there... by absoluteflatness · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Damn straight! by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Informative
    I'm tired of all this phoney-baloney liberal crap. The FBI are here for our own good. Only those with something to hide pay them any attention.

    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.

  3. Probably Java's Fault by magma · · Score: 3, Informative
    I have heard the FBI presentations where they talk about using libXML + C to handle data on the network but in most states IT departments are moving to Java + XML for messaging (even if the fingerprints arn't XML the bulk of the data on the network now is). This is not just a 5x hit on speed because Java is "kind of interpreted" or "not really compiled" but more like a 20x or more hit because XML is just so verbose, it eats 20x or more bandwidth AND Java is slow at processing it compared to the messaging it replaced. The smallest possible tag set is

    <a>A</a>
    , that's 8 chars compared to the 1 char it used to be.

    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.
  4. Re:Lockheed Martin? by verucabong · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually Lockheed Martin has a new, growing, IT support services division called Global Services and Information Services. In 2006, it made up 12% of its revenue and is one of its quickly growing segments. With government agencies looking to cut costs, sometimes it's cheaper to outsource their IT to an outside company. The hitch is that they need to be able to trust the company with some of the nation's most important data. That's where Lockheed Martin comes it - they've been a defense contractor for just about forever, so they have a reputation for trustworthiness and are vastly experienced in navigating governmental regulations, security clearances etc etc... It's a good thing.