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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
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.
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
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.
You can't fit 470 million fingerprints on an HD platter. There isn't enough clearance and the drive head plows into the fingerprint oil.
Clearly you don't rent DVD's from the same video library as me.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.