Where are my fingerprints?

August 25, 2005 8:08 AM

Renewed my license in Savannah, Georgia, which required the submission of fingerprints. Is there any way to check how my newly scanned fingerprint is being used? where it's stored? what database(s) it's in? etc, etc. I'm not looking for an argument on whether requiring the fingerprints is right or wrong, but I'm REALLY curious as to what they're going to do with it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher to Law & Government (10 answers total)

I don't live in Georgia and am not a lawyer or government wonk, so take this for what it's worth, but my understanding is that back in 1998, the Georgia legislature passed strict restrictions on who could get at the fingerprint info (law enforcement agencies, judges, prosecutors and licensing agencies in other states, and with a driver's consent, insurance companies). I don't know how one finds out who got access to specific records, though; a call to the DMV and/or a call to your state legislative rep might help discover that bit of info. More importantly, though, this year the Georgia legislature passed a law that explicitly bans the collection of the fingerprints (or any biological-based identifier) and mandates that all such databases be destroyed; the law takes effect on July 1st, 2006. (The law is here.)
posted by delfuego at 8:29 AM on August 25, 2005

(Oh, and you might want to fix the tags on your question.)
posted by delfuego at 8:30 AM on August 25, 2005

Well, the GA statutes give your Motor Vehicle Dept. the authority to take the fingerprints here. (long document, go to Section 40-5-28) There's no specific limitation on how the prints may be used there, but earlier in the same Title (scroll up to Section 40-5-2), we get into a lot of details about how the department can use its record information, which I assume includes your fingerprints. A quick read seems to indicate that they can furnish them to the cops, or the feds, in criminal-type situations, but otherwise they're for internal use only. (IANAL, I just read a lot of statutes.)
posted by JanetLand at 8:33 AM on August 25, 2005

Ah, shoulda used preview -- I think delfuego's find trumps my stuff.
posted by JanetLand at 8:34 AM on August 25, 2005

So do they run crime scene fingerprints against ALL Georgia license-holders?
posted by scarabic at 8:44 AM on August 25, 2005

So do they run crime scene fingerprints against ALL Georgia license-holders?

Why wouldn't they? New algorithms make fingerprint matching much quicker then it used to be.
posted by delmoi at 8:58 AM on August 25, 2005

Texas also requires a thumb print to get a drivers license, by the way.
posted by delmoi at 8:58 AM on August 25, 2005

Why wouldn't they?

Civil liberties? If I'm arrested then I can be fingerprinted, but the police can't randomly walk by and decide I look suspicious and then fingerprint me without a warrant or good reason to believe I was involved in a recent crime. As far as I know, the state couldn't run a fingerprint found at a crime against the DMV database. From browsing the Georgia legislation, it looks like it's in place for identity verification purposes.
posted by mikeh at 9:18 AM on August 25, 2005

At one point, they intended to share this data with other states as a criminal investigative too. More recently, there has been an effort to repeal the law
posted by Lame_username at 10:10 AM on August 25, 2005

Texas also requires a thumb print to get a drivers license, by the way.

For what it's worth, a thumbprint is okay for doing a one-to-one match (in other words, determining if print A is the same as print B). However, for a one-to many search (determining if print A matches any other print in the database), the minimum (standard) seems to be both index fingers. [I believe that is what the Department of Homeland Security is using, for example, at Texas border crossings, and I know that this is what the two major fingerprint search vendors - NEC and Sagem Morpho - are selling to law enforcement agencies.]

In other words, the FBI and other federal agencies don't have a database of just thumbprints (that the Texas prints could be added to) and are not likely to anytime in the foreseeable (well, near, anyway) future.
posted by WestCoaster at 12:25 PM on August 25, 2005