NYT: Report Finds (FBI, DHS, State Dept.) Infighting Over Fingerprints

[DeepModem Mom]

Report Finds Infighting Over Prints
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: December 30, 2004


WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 - More than three years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, infighting between federal agencies has so slowed efforts to unify the government's various systems for identifying fingerprints that most visitors to the United States are still not fully screened, Justice Department investigators said in a report issued on Wednesday.

Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, warned in the 110-page report, his fourth report on the problem, that the bureaucratic disagreement "creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected." In addition, criminal aliens - people who committed violent crimes in other nations - are often not identified before they enter the United States, the report said.

"Progress toward the longer-term goal of making all biometric fingerprint systems fully interoperable has stalled," Mr. Fine said in the report. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress required that the fingerprint systems of the country's law-enforcement agencies be integrated and has expressed "increasing concern," the report noted, about the lack of progress.

The core of the problem, the report said, was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department disagree on two basic issues: whether 2 or 10 fingers should be printed and what agencies should have access to those prints....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/politics/30fingerprint.html

[Supersedeas]

1. Good job Tom Ridge--what has he been doing anyways