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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.'"

8 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Lockheed Martin? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Lockheed Martin? by CoonAss56 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I work for the Army Corps of Engineers in NOLA and Lockheed just got a contract for the entire Corps IT system. The government IT people can't even get Lockheed to talk to them on an on-going basis. I think they are more interested in sub-contracting most if not all of the work to other people and just collecting the money as the prime contractor and not getting their hands dirty with the real work. They are proposing a seat-management type of system but have done no planning for such a complete reversal of what we have now. As a result, I feel within a year they will get booted and we will have to undergo another contracting out of our IT services.
      If anyone wants to see how well they have done at other govt projects, cast an eye to some Coast Guard ships that they lengthened and now are so un-seaworthy that they can't be moved from their berths. All the while Lockheed got paid and are not returning any money to the taxpayers for this debacle.

      --
      Won't Bow.....Don't Know How
  2. Chump change by MeditationSensation · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  3. Re:law enforcement by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Want to know where your freedom has gone, America? Overzealous prosecutors with political aspirations and gung-ho macho cops.

    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.

  4. Re:law enforcement by schwit1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Won't work if the DA is responsible for prosecuting cops. If a DA prosecutes cops no differently than non-cops he will see his cases get screwed up or seriously backlogged because the cops do the investigations.


    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.

  5. Try over $500M in total by MikeRT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. Lookup versus search by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  7. Interesting by kilodelta · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.