Talk:Fingerprint/Archive 2

World's first fingerprint bureau
This article says "Vucetich set up the world's first fingerprint bureau". But the article Hem Chandra Bose says "After that year, the Kolkata Anthropometric Bureau became the world's first Fingerprint Bureau."


 * "The world's first finger print bureau is built on the pioneering work of Sir William Herschel, then Chief Magistrate of Jungipore in Hooghly District of Bengal."
 * - "The first ever Finger Print Bureau in the world was established at Writer's Building at Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the year 1897."

One of the article is wrong and must be corrected. 124.123.200.18 (talk) 10:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Additional note: 2 and a half years later, and this problem is still on the page, just rephrased. Maybe don't make it semi-protected if you confirmed editors can't keep basic facts straight on the page. 14 Nov 2014

In Persia
The citation added for this claim for fingerprints in Persia can be seen here. It contains material about Japan that was added to the article the year before the source was published " By 702 C.E., Japan had adopted the Chinese practice of sealing contracts with fingerprints. Supposedly, in 14th century Persia, government documents were authenticated with thumbprints." It also uses Wikipedia as a reference, which would be grounds enough to disqualify it as a RS. :-) Dougweller (talk) 09:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Gypsum?
I object to the current final line of the section Absence or mutilation of fingerprints near the end of the article, on grounds of both verbal logic and forensic reality:

"Presence of gypsum powder near a crime scene makes finger-printing impossible due to its chemical properties."

Firstly, just because gypsum powder exists near a crime scene, it does not necessarily logically follow that every fingerprint or potentially printable surface at the crime scene is contaminated with gypsum. Secondly, as explained in the earlier section For identification, fingerprints can be preserved in at least three types at a crime scene (latent, patent and plastic), two of which require no chemical processing at all to detect and record. Finally, even for latent prints there are "... around 20 really effective [detection] methods which are currently in use in the more advanced fingerprint laboratories around the world." Please cite a source which supports that all of these "effective" methods are defeated by gypsum powder.

Also, the Absence or mutilation... section is about the absence or mutilation of dermal ridges on a person's fingers, not about conditions (other than altering or masking of those ridges) preventing fingerprints from being left or recoverable at a scene. Even if the statement above is accurate, it belongs elsewhere in the article.71.160.119.52 (talk) 07:33, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 8 January 2013
Remove the sentence about gypsum as it is not cited and is incorrect

131.251.254.137 (talk) 16:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done. I will not object to re-inserting this statement if it is properly referenced to a reliable source. &mdash; KuyaBriBri Talk 17:38, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 5 February 2013
There is a sentence "No two fingerprints have ever been found identical in many billions of human and automated computer comparisons.[citation needed] " which is wrong and in the next section (about errors) there are 2 counter-examples. Could somebody with sufficient editing privileges please remove this sentence? -- 79.214.65.129 (talk) 21:07, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (relocated Martinevans123 (talk) 21:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC))

Fingerprint
Impressions of fingerprints may be left behind on a surface by the natural secretions of sweat from the eccrine glands that are present in friction ridge skin, or sebaceous glands that generate an oily substance called sebum, or they may be made by ink or other substances transferred from the peaks of friction ridges on the skin to a relatively smooth surface such as a fingerprint card.[4] Fingerprint records normally contain impressions from the pad on the last joint of fingers and thumbs, although fingerprint cards also typically record portions of lower joint areas of the fingers.

Smzeoli100 (talk) 20:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting question.svg Question:
 * Hi, welcome to Wikipedia!
 * The text you've added to this paragraph, "or sebaceous glands that generate an oily substance called sebum," – is that in the 1972 journal article in the citation? If not, we need to provide some source that says this, or at the very least reword the paragraph so it doesn't imply that text is supported by the article.
 * For future reference, it's useful to highlight the text you're requesting; it wasn't immediately clear what change you wanted to be made. You should also leave out the  parameter from ; as you wrote it, it looked like the request had already been answered.
 * —me_and 13:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I've set |answered=yes while awaiting source information from the OP, to save other editors coming here unnecessarily. (|answered=no is OK as equivalent to omitting the answered= parameter.) --Stfg (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem
This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Diannaa (talk) 02:55, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Dated info
The section on Shirley McKie has some outdated info from 2009. It can be updated by referencing Fingerprint Inquiry, or you could copy/paste this summary from that article (I've edited the summary for brevity):

The Inquiry Report was published on 11 December 2011. It found that there was no conspiracy against Ms McKie, but that the fingerprint markings were misidentified due to human error. It concluded that the misidentifications of Y7 and QI2 Ross expose weaknesses in the methodology of fingerprint comparison and in particular where it involves complex marks, but that there is no reason to suggest that fingerprint comparison in general is an inherently unreliable form of evidence.

Thank you in advance to whomever updates this. 2601:7:B80:B1A:58F3:1418:75E4:BA96 (talk) 05:55, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Edit request, 2015-02-05
Subsubcategory 2.1.5—Electronic Recording, found unter Types— only lists one newspaper report of the usage of electronic recording of fingerprints. I’d like to add some further information and details about the usage of cameras to record fingerprints:

Recent studies found that the improving cameras with increasing resolution of smartphones might have a high impact on users’ security: The back-facing camera of a device can be used to capture an image of the user’s index finger, which on smartphones using biometric means of authentication is often used to authenticate a user against the smartphone.

At 31C3 (the 31st Chaos Communication Congress), hardware hacker starbug presented how DSLRs with high resolution and equipped with a Long focus lens can be used to capture images of hands, or more specifically, fingers in order to use them for spoofing.

--PattaFeuFeu (talk) 20:09, 5 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes check.svg Done -- Sam Sing! 13:10, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Splitting some content

 * Thanks . While you're here, what is your opinion about splitting some of the content here to a separate page? (The 'split' tag has been bugging me for some time). --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:27, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * At 94k and with no 1 section screaming "I'm big, split me up", and as the was a drive-by tag by an editor with no edits to the talk page, I took the bold decision to remove the message template. Anyone should feel free to add it again, especially if they have a plan for a split. -- Sam Sing! 08:45, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. There's a role for both drive-by tagging and drive-by untagging of articles. Thanks =P. --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 August 2015
In this section ("...or to identify people are incapacitated or deceased and thus unable to identify themselves, as in the aftermath of a natural disaster..."), should there be a "who" after "people", or am I just being a failed pedant? If there should be one, could somebody add it, please? Sorry for adding such a minor request.

108.180.141.44 (talk) 00:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done good catch. thanks Cannolis (talk) 01:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Since when legally in use in the US?
I came to the article to find out since when the system is in general legal and forensic use in the United States. The only data given is some guy in New York started using it in 1902. The reason why I'm trying to find out is that I'm currently watching Chinatown where Jack Nicholson, in 1937, comes upon the body of his earlier client in her burglarized house in LA, California, and he pretty much acts like he doesn't need to worry one bit about leaving his fingerprints anywhere, even after finding the body. So, yeah, the article is painfully short regarding the system's general and wide-spread adoption. --80.187.106.89 (talk) 02:57, 26 August 2015 (UTC)