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How Fingerprinting Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Stuffy Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and
0:15
Speaker 1: there's some papers in front of me, and then I
0:17
Speaker 1: key a lamp and a big old microphone and it's
0:20
Speaker 1: all pressing in on me really hard. That means this
0:23
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. That means Josh has gone
0:26
Speaker 1: on vacations. When the microphone is the size of a watermelon,
0:32
Speaker 1: it's just hitting you in the face. Yeah, I'm like,
0:34
Speaker 1: it doesn't normally a braid my chin is today. So yeah, Chuck, Josh,
0:40
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I'm great. You get some fingerprints there?
0:43
Speaker 1: Let me see you. Um, I have four on my
0:48
Speaker 1: fingers and one each on each thumb. Yeah, are you're
0:50
Speaker 1: one of those guys on um Oh, let me tell
0:54
Speaker 1: you a little story about where your little fingerprints came from,
0:57
Speaker 1: back when Chuck, little Chuck was just a ten week
1:01
Speaker 1: old fetus. Okay, so nineteen seventy it's a certain point
1:07
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. Well, if I was born in March
1:09
Speaker 1: seventy one, and that would go back, just go back
1:11
Speaker 1: nine months from there. Okay, whatever that is, uh nine seventy.
1:16
Speaker 1: So your your little basil cell layer of your skin.
1:21
Speaker 1: You got three. You got the epidermis, the outer layer,
1:24
Speaker 1: the basil layer, which is in between that's like that
1:26
Speaker 1: where all the new skin cells are produced. Then there's
1:29
Speaker 1: a dermist below that. Those are your three layers. About
1:33
Speaker 1: that time, your little basil layer started going haywire, producing
1:37
Speaker 1: skin cells at a much faster rate than your epidermis
1:41
Speaker 1: and your dermist, which meant that your basil layer was
1:45
Speaker 1: growing up against your epidermis and your dermists squishing together. Yeah.
1:51
Speaker 1: And so when this would happen, when it would grow
1:53
Speaker 1: up against say you're your epidermis, it would create a
1:57
Speaker 1: point of contact, and that point of content act would
2:00
Speaker 1: create enough pressure so that your basil layer would buckle
2:03
Speaker 1: a little bit. And what's weird about that was that
2:06
Speaker 1: your little basil layer buckled in what appeared to be
2:10
Speaker 1: little patterns, little worlds, little swoops, little circles. But what's neat,
2:17
Speaker 1: chuck is at this point, within the next six weeks
2:20
Speaker 1: after it started, you had fingerprints that are going to
2:24
Speaker 1: stay the same for the rest of your life, just
2:27
Speaker 1: beneath your epidermis. Yeah, the tiny little chuck fingers are
2:32
Speaker 1: now sort of tiny little man fingers, but they are
2:36
Speaker 1: the same fingerprints throughout my entire line. That's right, And
2:40
Speaker 1: you can it's true damage your fingerprints. Some people have purposely,
2:44
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about, but for the most part, since
2:46
Speaker 1: it's your basil layer, that's where the actual fingerprint is.
2:51
Speaker 1: Even if you cut your epidermis, which happens, your skin
2:55
Speaker 1: will grow back in your basil layer will remain the same.
2:58
Speaker 1: Your fingerprints will remain the same. That's a great way
3:00
Speaker 1: to end this good night. Uh that was a great
3:04
Speaker 1: little story. And I would grow up to be a
3:08
Speaker 1: sociopath podcaster with those very same fingerprints. I don't think
3:13
Speaker 1: you're sociopathic. I'm just kidding. Um, So we're talking fingerprints,
3:18
Speaker 1: and you mentioned the little ridges, little worlds, and we're
3:22
Speaker 1: not making these words up. W H O R L
3:24
Speaker 1: S is actually what it's called worlds. Valleys and uh
3:28
Speaker 1: loops loops, arches, arches. Those are three. I don't know
3:32
Speaker 1: where you got valleys. Um, well, it's a in the pattern.
3:36
Speaker 1: But that's not a part of the official fingerprints fingerprint
3:39
Speaker 1: classic cases. No, no no, no, no, that's not a part
3:41
Speaker 1: of the classic Um, but each are unique. And we
3:45
Speaker 1: all know this because you know that's why they use
3:48
Speaker 1: fingerprinting as one of the biometric UH sciences to classify
3:52
Speaker 1: people and identify people. Um, there's a one in sixty
3:56
Speaker 1: four billion chance that your finger fingerprint will match exactly
3:59
Speaker 1: with someone. So get this. Sir Francis Galton was the
4:03
Speaker 1: one who said that, and he was saying that through
4:07
Speaker 1: his classification system legally speaking, as far as what would
4:11
Speaker 1: be admissible in court, probably there would be a one
4:14
Speaker 1: and sixty four chance of matching people's fingerprints up. He
4:17
Speaker 1: also he also thought that if you went down on
4:23
Speaker 1: more of a a more granular level and looked at
4:27
Speaker 1: people's fingerprints, there were probably a better chance that people
4:31
Speaker 1: would have fingerprints who matched. And if you take Galton's
4:36
Speaker 1: kind of liberal view of matching fingerprints, and you have
4:40
Speaker 1: a one and sixty four billion chance of having matching
4:43
Speaker 1: fingerprints with somebody just looking like that's somebody just looking
4:46
Speaker 1: at the patterns. Um. Since about a hundred billion people
4:53
Speaker 1: have lived in the history of humanity, that means that
4:56
Speaker 1: there's at least one pair of people who have ever
4:59
Speaker 1: lived who had the same fingerprints. And that's if you
5:04
Speaker 1: subscribe to his numbers. Yeah from eighteen whatever, which may
5:08
Speaker 1: be overestimating it are we are fingerprints may be slightly
5:11
Speaker 1: more similar than you think. Interesting. Yeah, well they are
5:15
Speaker 1: more unique than DNA, because we all know if you
5:17
Speaker 1: listen to the Twins podcast that twins can share a
5:20
Speaker 1: lot of DNA, but they can't share fingerprints. No, it's different,
5:24
Speaker 1: it's very different. Um, all right, so let's get into this. Fingerprints,
5:28
Speaker 1: um are actually made of ridges called friction ridges, and
5:33
Speaker 1: they have little pores underneath them, and it's the pores
5:35
Speaker 1: where you leak like sweat and oils, and that's actually
5:38
Speaker 1: what the mark you are leaving as a fingerprint is
5:41
Speaker 1: coming up through those pores at those friction ridges. You're
5:45
Speaker 1: not leaving skin behind, No, you're just leaving a little
5:47
Speaker 1: bit of steam, that's right. And they're really popular way
5:52
Speaker 1: of uh, probably the most popular biometric right now because
5:58
Speaker 1: everyone's leaving fingerprints. Everyone's got fingers, well not everyone. They're
6:02
Speaker 1: easy to classify, they're easy to sort. Um. They do
6:05
Speaker 1: mention this article that like you could probably do the
6:07
Speaker 1: same thing with like toe prints, but um, no one
6:10
Speaker 1: wants to ask all these criminals to take off their
6:13
Speaker 1: shoes and socks and like toe prints, especially not if
6:15
Speaker 1: they just defecated in the back seat of the police cruiser. Plus,
6:18
Speaker 1: you're more likely and they even mentioned this in the article,
6:20
Speaker 1: you're more likely to leave a fingerprint than a toe print.
6:22
Speaker 1: They don't even put that in here. A lot of
6:24
Speaker 1: people that was the most obvious. Uh yeah, you know,
6:28
Speaker 1: you're not gonna commit a crime barefoot, and some people do.
6:32
Speaker 1: But it's necessary. But nowadays it's virtually too late because
6:37
Speaker 1: we've amassed such a database of fingerprints that, like a
6:42
Speaker 1: bare footprint would be almost useless unless you had the
6:45
Speaker 1: person in the suspect. It was about one and every
6:47
Speaker 1: six people have their fingerprints on record. Yeah, and that
6:51
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that one and every six people have been
6:53
Speaker 1: charged with the crime. But there's a lot of ways
6:56
Speaker 1: that fingerprints make it into the fingerprint database. Aphis uh yeah,
7:02
Speaker 1: what people use them as a signature verifications these days,
7:06
Speaker 1: as um to identify victims, um job applications. Sometimes the
7:11
Speaker 1: first time mine made it in because my dad took
7:13
Speaker 1: me to the public library to have me fingerprinted as
7:16
Speaker 1: a child. Really yeah, it's just so now that like
7:20
Speaker 1: we have your kid on file in case he ever
7:22
Speaker 1: goes missing. Yep. After that whole Adam Walsh thing. That
7:25
Speaker 1: was it, like anything anybody said like this could help
7:28
Speaker 1: if your kid is kidnapped or whatever. Parents just did
7:31
Speaker 1: it in the early eighties. My parents did. No. No,
7:33
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm on file anywhere. Really with my fingerprints?
7:36
Speaker 1: That's good, is it? I guess so? Sure? Man, your
7:40
Speaker 1: fingerprints are your own? Yeah? Maybe so. Um, and that
7:44
Speaker 1: is one in six people. And apparently the iPhone five
7:48
Speaker 1: s the rumor is is it is going to have
7:51
Speaker 1: fingerprint authentification instead of your pass code. Wow, it's pretty neat.
7:56
Speaker 1: We'll see. That's the rumor. We used to have laptops
7:59
Speaker 1: here that had that. Well, yeah you did. I'd never
8:01
Speaker 1: use mine. Yeah I did. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah.
8:03
Speaker 1: Thumb print right, Uh, whatever you wanted. I think it
8:06
Speaker 1: was really either your thumb, your fore finger, or your
8:10
Speaker 1: middle finger. I would have done my bigtoe right. It
8:13
Speaker 1: would have been like, isn't it obvious? Um, there's I
8:18
Speaker 1: guess cars. Some cars now have birometric Um. I guess ignitions. Yeah,
8:25
Speaker 1: and we might as well talk about why that stinks. Yeah,
8:27
Speaker 1: because in Malaysia. Yeah, in Malaysia, they cut off a
8:30
Speaker 1: guy's finger to get into his Mercedes. And that is
8:33
Speaker 1: a worry for police as fingerprinting becomes more and more
8:36
Speaker 1: used as authentification, uh that people are gonna start cutting
8:40
Speaker 1: fingers off to do so did you say authentification, authentification, authentication, authentication?
8:48
Speaker 1: What do you add in another syllable? Oh? Boy? So, hey,
8:53
Speaker 1: don't get on me about words. Yeah I can't. Okay, Um,
8:58
Speaker 1: there's one that won't bring up what the deletrius deleterious.
9:03
Speaker 1: I just say it in my own way. No, deletrious
9:08
Speaker 1: this is not a word. It is. You're deleting it.
9:11
Speaker 1: It deletes things. It's negative, all right. So, um, and
9:15
Speaker 1: if you off this case. Uh so the biometric companies
9:20
Speaker 1: who said, well, we can't have our customers fingers being
9:23
Speaker 1: cut off, said well, now we'll just add a little
9:26
Speaker 1: something that the texts blood flow. So now our customers
9:28
Speaker 1: are just kidnapped rather than have their fingers cut off
9:31
Speaker 1: or the the kidnapper doesn't know this. And you you
9:34
Speaker 1: still have your car, but you're out of finger right.
9:37
Speaker 1: You should probably put like that kind of thing on
9:39
Speaker 1: ads on busses, yeah, or put it on your car like,
9:43
Speaker 1: oh yeah, car will not start. A finger is detached. Yeah,
9:45
Speaker 1: because think about that could be even worse if their finger.
9:48
Speaker 1: If the finger doesn't work, they're like, oh, maybe it's
9:49
Speaker 1: his other finger. Just keep cutting fingers off and you're like, no,
9:53
Speaker 1: it needs a pulse. Alright. So we talked about the
9:57
Speaker 1: friction ridges. Yeah, they're called f Just remember because they
10:01
Speaker 1: buck up buckle under the pressure. The friction up against
10:05
Speaker 1: the dermis that can take the pressure. Buckles. Um. But
10:09
Speaker 1: the forms a specific pattern and this is what you know.
10:12
Speaker 1: The arrangement shape and size and number of lines is
10:14
Speaker 1: what they're looking for when they're identifying and comparing these things.
10:18
Speaker 1: And there's three different patterns there can be. Uh, there's
10:21
Speaker 1: loops begins on one side, curves up and around and
10:25
Speaker 1: exits the other. Yeah, look at your fingers while we describe.
10:28
Speaker 1: There are radio loops and owner loops, um radial slope
10:31
Speaker 1: toward the thumb, owner towards the little finger, and intuitive
10:35
Speaker 1: to tell which way that the slope is going. Oh yeah,
10:39
Speaker 1: just yeah, because technically you could be like, well no,
10:41
Speaker 1: I think it's so much way to turn your head.
10:44
Speaker 1: The aforementioned whirls are circular or spiral in nature, and
10:49
Speaker 1: arches slope up and then down like, and they're described
10:52
Speaker 1: here as narrow mountains. Yeah, it just goes. I think
10:58
Speaker 1: that summed it up. So those are the identifying marks
11:01
Speaker 1: on your fingers, um that you can see the naked eye.
11:04
Speaker 1: And then if you're in law enforcement, they're gonna be
11:07
Speaker 1: also analyzing something called minutia, which you can't see with
11:10
Speaker 1: the naked eye. No. And these are basically like further
11:14
Speaker 1: characteristics of the loops and worlds and arches. So you
11:17
Speaker 1: might you might have a spur, which is another um
11:20
Speaker 1: like world that comes off of a larger whirl um.
11:24
Speaker 1: Or there's an abrupt end to a ridge, or there's
11:27
Speaker 1: bifurcation or islands. It's like a world within a world. Um.
11:31
Speaker 1: There's deltas, which are like ridges that form like y patterns,
11:35
Speaker 1: just a little stuff like that, and they all form
11:38
Speaker 1: this classification system that the cops rely on when they
11:42
Speaker 1: fingerprint you. And the the science, the forensic science of
11:46
Speaker 1: fingerprinting is called deactyloscopy. That's right, like pterodactyl um. And
11:54
Speaker 1: I guess there are probably some places still that do
11:56
Speaker 1: it the old fashioned way UM and don't have digital
11:58
Speaker 1: scanning finger methods. Montana hello, Montana, Um. They would do
12:05
Speaker 1: it like you've seen it on countless TV shows and movies.
12:08
Speaker 1: They would clean your hand off, dry it off with alcohol. Yeah,
12:13
Speaker 1: they want to get all the sea bulm off, get
12:14
Speaker 1: all the sum off, roll the fingertip um, and then
12:19
Speaker 1: I usually say left or right, but I imagine you
12:20
Speaker 1: could do either way to get the ink on the finger.
12:25
Speaker 1: Make sure it's fully covered. Then you roll onto the
12:27
Speaker 1: card from fingernail to fingernail, from one side to the other.
12:32
Speaker 1: That is called a rolled fingerprint. Yeah. You do this
12:34
Speaker 1: with all eight fingers and two thumbs and uh, then
12:39
Speaker 1: you've got your set of rolled prints. Then they take
12:41
Speaker 1: your hands and cover all your fingers with the ink
12:45
Speaker 1: and then just have you press it down flat at
12:47
Speaker 1: the bottom of this fingerprint card. And uh, those are
12:51
Speaker 1: that's a set of flat prints which are used apparently
12:53
Speaker 1: to um verify the uh um yeah, exactly to say
13:00
Speaker 1: they have two sets basically, yeah. Um. If you live
13:04
Speaker 1: in the modern world and you live in a large city,
13:08
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna have digital scanners doing the same thing. Um.
13:11
Speaker 1: It's an optical scanner that basically put your fingers on
13:15
Speaker 1: there and it through magic converts that into digital data
13:19
Speaker 1: patterns and then they have programs that map those points
13:22
Speaker 1: and basically it's sort of like you see in the movies. Yeah,
13:27
Speaker 1: and what's neat about the optical scanners. The picture that
13:30
Speaker 1: it makes is the inverse. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense,
13:36
Speaker 1: So you're uh to negative image, right. The the the
13:40
Speaker 1: the worlds and everything had more light bounce off of them,
13:43
Speaker 1: so they tend to be lighter. Um, whereas like the
13:47
Speaker 1: valleys and everything in between, the friction ridges are darker.
13:50
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say
13:51
Speaker 1: it's more accurate than rolled prints. I might be wrong,
13:55
Speaker 1: You're probably right from what I've read. Sure, Yeah, because
13:59
Speaker 1: you know when someone's like you ever seen First Blood? No? Yeah,
14:04
Speaker 1: you have stallone the Vampire Show? No, No, that's true Blood,
14:10
Speaker 1: first Blood. The Rambo first printure. Remember when he was
14:13
Speaker 1: being difficult when they were booking him and he wasn't
14:16
Speaker 1: doing the fingerprinting right right, They couldn't get good prints
14:18
Speaker 1: because Rambo wouldn't stand for it. No, he doesn't take
14:21
Speaker 1: any crap, all right. There's two types of prints visible
14:24
Speaker 1: prints that we talked of. Um, actually we didn't talk
14:27
Speaker 1: about him there there if you actually leave an intention
14:30
Speaker 1: in something, a visible print like dirt or clay or
14:33
Speaker 1: something blood or something like that. Blood would be a
14:35
Speaker 1: good example. It's visible. You can look and say there's
14:38
Speaker 1: a fingerprint exactly. There's also latent prints, which we leave
14:42
Speaker 1: everywhere all the time. Um. And those are the ones
14:44
Speaker 1: that are just made with the sea bum coming out
14:46
Speaker 1: of our fingers, the pores on our friction ridges, and
14:50
Speaker 1: those are typically not necessarily naked to the the human eye.
14:55
Speaker 1: Like if you look at like, yes, stainless steel, you'll
14:58
Speaker 1: probably see some pressure clear class maybe right, But those
15:01
Speaker 1: are technically latent prints. Um. They also can be um
15:06
Speaker 1: invisible to the naked eye, and so they have to
15:09
Speaker 1: be um dusted. Yeah, and they actually do dust with
15:13
Speaker 1: a little brush. UM. I looked up the dusting powder
15:16
Speaker 1: fingerprinting powder, and apparently most of it these days is proprietary,
15:20
Speaker 1: so like you don't know exactly what's in it, really,
15:22
Speaker 1: I just guess like carbon, who knows. Maybe I know
15:27
Speaker 1: you should formulate your own Josh's fingerprinting caller, you know,
15:32
Speaker 1: market it to some local harmfulks enforcement agencies. Yeah, I'll
15:35
Speaker 1: sell it like snake oil or something like Uncle Peppi's
15:38
Speaker 1: patented a one blue ribbon fingerprinting. Uh so they lift
15:43
Speaker 1: the prints, um, these latent prints, and those are the
15:46
Speaker 1: obviously the prints too that you see criminals and TV
15:49
Speaker 1: shows and movies always trying to wipe off with a hanky, right,
15:53
Speaker 1: very wisely, Yeah, I wonder if what the if that
15:57
Speaker 1: really works? You want to get into that, do you know? Yes,
16:00
Speaker 1: it should Okay, it should work from what I understand.
16:04
Speaker 1: I read this one paper that was basically like, we
16:07
Speaker 1: should not be using fingerprints in court any longer. That
16:13
Speaker 1: first of all, we have DNA now, and DNA is objective.
16:17
Speaker 1: It's like this protein sequence is the same as this
16:20
Speaker 1: protein sequence. Right with fingerprinting is subjective, even though there's
16:24
Speaker 1: an extensive classification system, it's I think that this print
16:29
Speaker 1: matches up to this print. There's not. It's not quantitative,
16:34
Speaker 1: or if it is, it's not enough quantitative enough. Also,
16:38
Speaker 1: there's so much faith placed by the public in fingerprint
16:43
Speaker 1: analysis that fingerprinting people who do this work frequently are
16:51
Speaker 1: matching stuff like they're they're taking a great role print
16:55
Speaker 1: and comparing it to like just the worst smudge print
16:58
Speaker 1: on the planet, where you know, you can be like,
17:00
Speaker 1: I don't get that because I'm not a dactyloscopist. But
17:05
Speaker 1: I'm sure that somebody who who is that could could
17:08
Speaker 1: figure this out. And supposedly that's a lot of faith
17:10
Speaker 1: that we're placing into people, and that now that DNA
17:13
Speaker 1: evidence is becoming more and more UM available and prevalent
17:16
Speaker 1: and widespread, it's starting to show like um fingerprinting is
17:20
Speaker 1: actually probably put a lot of innocent people behind bars,
17:24
Speaker 1: and we really shouldn't rely on it anymore because even
17:27
Speaker 1: even if you have a great print that you took
17:31
Speaker 1: a latent print, right yeah, and there are plenty like
17:35
Speaker 1: they're not shysters or frauds or crooks because even within
17:38
Speaker 1: their profession, a lot of them are like there's a
17:41
Speaker 1: lot of recklessness going on here. Um that you're never
17:46
Speaker 1: going to have a really great latent print. It's never
17:49
Speaker 1: gonna be good, and so you're working from a deficit
17:52
Speaker 1: every time, and you're also comparing it to a role print,
17:56
Speaker 1: and a roll print is also not the same as
17:59
Speaker 1: another rolled print made right after. Like you can take
18:02
Speaker 1: somebody's finger and roll it from fingernails, fingernail, pick it up,
18:05
Speaker 1: put it on the next little box, roll the same
18:07
Speaker 1: finger from fingernail, the fingernail and you're going to have
18:10
Speaker 1: basically two different prints. So that's in the olden days
18:13
Speaker 1: before they had the digital scanning though, right, But those
18:16
Speaker 1: are still a lot of the ones on file imagine. Yes,
18:18
Speaker 1: And I feel like we're probably still dealing with the
18:22
Speaker 1: same deficits. The paper I read was from like two
18:24
Speaker 1: thousand five or seven, so it's not like it was
18:27
Speaker 1: old and they're they're saying like this is still going
18:30
Speaker 1: on with the advent of digital scanning. Plus, I think
18:33
Speaker 1: you know as well as I do, when you're a
18:34
Speaker 1: court and the attorney yells at the top of his
18:37
Speaker 1: lungs his fingerprints were found all over the murder scene,
18:40
Speaker 1: your your toast, well, yeah, and I think that a
18:42
Speaker 1: lot of perpetrators to think that, like if they have
18:46
Speaker 1: your prints but you're dead, that's it, and like they
18:48
Speaker 1: have you dead to rights, so you might as well confess.
18:51
Speaker 1: And I'm sure it's a great tool for confessing. Yeah.
18:53
Speaker 1: I wonder if d n A thwarts I wonder if
18:55
Speaker 1: anything like that actually thwarts people from committing crimes. You know,
19:00
Speaker 1: I wonder if anyone ever stops and goes, boy, now
19:01
Speaker 1: a d n A. I would think you can just
19:03
Speaker 1: wipe down a crime scene, Like if I drop a
19:06
Speaker 1: hair on the carpet, then I could be, you know, nabbed.
19:09
Speaker 1: Sure I would think that's a pretty good deterrent. Yeah,
19:11
Speaker 1: I just don't know in the criminal mind how how
19:13
Speaker 1: that operates. I'm sure it makes them operate a lot
19:16
Speaker 1: less sloppy than I used to. You know, that's a
19:18
Speaker 1: good point. All right, Let's talk a little bit about
19:21
Speaker 1: the history, because it's pretty interesting. I think, um that
19:25
Speaker 1: in ancient Babylon they actually uh press fingertips and clay
19:29
Speaker 1: to for some business transactions. Pretty advanced. I mean, thousands
19:33
Speaker 1: of years ago people already understood like if fingertips are unique,
19:36
Speaker 1: and of course the Chinese we're always ahead of the
19:39
Speaker 1: game on everything. It seemed like they actually used ink
19:43
Speaker 1: on paper for business transactions and help identify their kids,
19:47
Speaker 1: like my dad. Yeah, I thought it was kind of weird, though,
19:49
Speaker 1: can you un identify your child? Oh well, if they
19:53
Speaker 1: grow up, if they're kidnapped and take into another village,
19:56
Speaker 1: I guess, so they grow up in return to claim
19:58
Speaker 1: of birthright. Yeah, that's a good point. Sure. Um, it
20:03
Speaker 1: wasn't until they didn't use them for identifying criminals until
20:07
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and there's a series of events that's
20:10
Speaker 1: sort of just not necessarily connected, happened one after the
20:14
Speaker 1: other to sort of advance it at the same time.
20:17
Speaker 1: The first eight was a guy named Sir William Herschel,
20:21
Speaker 1: and Englishman who was chief magistrate of the Hoogli District
20:26
Speaker 1: in India, and he started recording fingerprints when signing documents.
20:32
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the first thing, right. Then you
20:35
Speaker 1: mentioned Henry Faulds. He came around next, Scottish doctor. Yeah,
20:38
Speaker 1: he was, Um, I guess he got into Japanese pottery
20:41
Speaker 1: and noticed like the fingerprints left behind by the artists,
20:45
Speaker 1: and um, he started getting into fingerprinting. So he wanted
20:49
Speaker 1: to create a classification system and said, I'm not gonna
20:52
Speaker 1: do it myself. I'm cousins to Charles Darwin all this
20:54
Speaker 1: asked him to do it. He's pretty good at that,
20:56
Speaker 1: and Darwin said, I'm kind of busy, but I have
20:59
Speaker 1: another cousin. His name is Sir Francis Galton, and he's
21:02
Speaker 1: going to be into this. Galton here's a eugenicist. I
21:05
Speaker 1: wonder if Darwin was like, oh god, it's you know,
21:11
Speaker 1: another classification Henry again, I almos pass him off. The cousin,
21:16
Speaker 1: cousin Frank, Yeah, be cousin Frank. So, like you said,
21:20
Speaker 1: he was augenicist, um and he got I feel like
21:23
Speaker 1: we talked about him before he pops up here there,
21:26
Speaker 1: just pretty big in um in this era. Yeah, he
21:30
Speaker 1: was the first dude to really start kind of collecting
21:34
Speaker 1: biometric information on people, um, not just fingerprints, all kinds
21:37
Speaker 1: of stuff. And being a eugenicist, he decided that there
21:41
Speaker 1: was a perfect human and we should selectively breed ourselves.
21:45
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, we're not promoting his work by the way. Um,
21:49
Speaker 1: although in two he wrote a book called Fingerprints and
21:53
Speaker 1: he outlined his systems, first time it had ever been done,
21:56
Speaker 1: and it was based on the system we know today
21:59
Speaker 1: archist loops and roles. Uh. And then in France, the
22:03
Speaker 1: guy named Alfonse Bertillon. Now he's made maybe four appearances
22:07
Speaker 1: in our podcast before I knew I knew that name. Um,
22:11
Speaker 1: he was at the same time using his own system
22:15
Speaker 1: called bert Bertiel nage and uh, anthropometry is basically what
22:20
Speaker 1: he was doing. Yeah, because remember he was like working
22:22
Speaker 1: in the Paris police department and like he saw the
22:26
Speaker 1: same criminals come and go, but they use aliases. So
22:28
Speaker 1: he devised the system of like measuring their face and
22:32
Speaker 1: head in their tears and all that. Definitely sketches. He
22:34
Speaker 1: was definitely that one. Yeah, definitely UM. And he one
22:37
Speaker 1: of them also was fingerprinting too, but his his system
22:40
Speaker 1: was extremely exhaustive, even though it was adopted by the
22:43
Speaker 1: London police. I believe it was just all it was
22:46
Speaker 1: really time consuming, sure, but he was advancing the art,
22:51
Speaker 1: like eight of them at once. Uh. And then about
22:55
Speaker 1: the same time in Argentina, UM, a police officer named
22:57
Speaker 1: Juan Uh. You wanna try that a it sounds good,
23:01
Speaker 1: doesn't sound Argentinian, but Umo, he actually used fingerprinting. This
23:08
Speaker 1: is a two in a case to convict a mother
23:12
Speaker 1: who had killed her two kids, when in fact she
23:15
Speaker 1: was saying it was her her boyfriend. He actually matched
23:18
Speaker 1: fingerprints and she confessed and like he had her first
23:21
Speaker 1: case right, there were actually being used in uh to
23:24
Speaker 1: convict a criminal. Yeah, that was the first time it
23:26
Speaker 1: ever happened. Two and Buenos Aires, UM, I think what
23:32
Speaker 1: The following year eree a guy named Sir Edward Henry.
23:36
Speaker 1: He was the commissioner of the police department. He became
23:39
Speaker 1: interested in using fingerprinting to fight crimes. UM. And he
23:44
Speaker 1: came up with a classification system that further extended Galton's UM.
23:50
Speaker 1: So he came up with, I believe the minutia and UM,
23:53
Speaker 1: I guess the kind of the comparable points that we
23:57
Speaker 1: rely on still today. It's called the henrylassification system. And
24:01
Speaker 1: when you see on tv UM, you know, a fingerprint
24:06
Speaker 1: fed into a computer and like it flashes through for
24:09
Speaker 1: some reason all of the fingerprints that it's matching them
24:12
Speaker 1: against that is using the Henry classification system that this
24:15
Speaker 1: guy created in that's pretty awesome. Uh. In nineteen o one,
24:19
Speaker 1: Scotland Yard established the Fingerprint Bureau, it's first one, and
24:23
Speaker 1: then they used them as evidence the following year for
24:26
Speaker 1: the first time, and then the year after that in
24:28
Speaker 1: New York they started using it in state prisons. And
24:31
Speaker 1: then the FBI said it's not a bad idea, let's
24:33
Speaker 1: get on board exactly, So everybody's getting on board. The
24:36
Speaker 1: Henry system like really allowed a system of classification that
24:40
Speaker 1: could be used anywhere UM to be devised, and it
24:45
Speaker 1: was adopted. The problem was it was extremely time consuming too. Yeah,
24:50
Speaker 1: you're matching paper to paper basically, and you're doing it
24:54
Speaker 1: with a magnifying glass. Yeah, that the computer systems that
24:57
Speaker 1: we see today on TV, those are going through you know, millions, say, um,
25:04
Speaker 1: possible matches. Even if you had like a thousand, how
25:08
Speaker 1: many detectives would it take to just look through a
25:11
Speaker 1: set of prints, your control prints and then you know,
25:14
Speaker 1: another print to find a killer or something like that
25:19
Speaker 1: from a latent print. Yeah, they call it minutia for
25:21
Speaker 1: a reason. Exactly. Imagine those guys went kind of nuts, um,
25:26
Speaker 1: And that's if they even had a fingerprint on file,
25:29
Speaker 1: like they were counting on someone having because at the time,
25:32
Speaker 1: you know, it was only criminals had figger prints. Well,
25:35
Speaker 1: they probably were like, this looks like a man's thumb print.
25:38
Speaker 1: Let's go through all the thumb prints of the men
25:40
Speaker 1: we have on file and see if we can catch somebody. Thummy,
25:44
Speaker 1: it was much better if like you could catch a suspect,
25:47
Speaker 1: print them and then compare it. But that's you know,
25:50
Speaker 1: not necessarily what they were doing. Luckily, we created computers
25:54
Speaker 1: to be our mindless slaves at this kind of stuff,
25:57
Speaker 1: and starting around the seventies, Yeah, and Japan was their
26:01
Speaker 1: national police agency, was the first one to use this
26:04
Speaker 1: kind of automation. In the nineteen eighties and they created
26:07
Speaker 1: the Automated Fingerprint Identification systems APISTS. Its slogan was warm,
26:12
Speaker 1: fuzzy happiness. That's what it says in quotes in their name,
26:17
Speaker 1: the Automated Fingerprinting Concern. Uh so they used it in
26:22
Speaker 1: the US UM to too great effect. Although the problem
26:26
Speaker 1: was it wasn't integrated, Like you know, they didn't share
26:30
Speaker 1: information between agencies or between districts of of law enforcement.
26:34
Speaker 1: So you're kind of just stuck with whoever you had
26:36
Speaker 1: on file, right like, even though it was computerized. A yeah, yeah,
26:40
Speaker 1: a particular police department, maybe even a statewide police department
26:45
Speaker 1: if you're luck, could buy APHIST an apist system. Yeah,
26:47
Speaker 1: but like that was your APHIST system. Fortunately, the FBI said, hey,
26:51
Speaker 1: there's this awesome thing called the Internet. Yeah I should
26:54
Speaker 1: I say, fortunately if you're a criminal, not necessarily fortunately,
26:57
Speaker 1: or you're in the privacy and all that. Um. But they,
27:00
Speaker 1: the FBI and I think UM created the Integrated APHIS UM,
27:06
Speaker 1: which basically plugged all of these databases together and created
27:10
Speaker 1: one huge database that the FBI maintains screwed up. Their
27:13
Speaker 1: acronym though, i aphis Yeah it's terrible. UM. So yeah,
27:19
Speaker 1: now there's one in six Americans who has their fingerprints
27:25
Speaker 1: on file and i aphis yea, and I think they
27:27
Speaker 1: say it takes a about thirty minutes as little as
27:30
Speaker 1: thirty minutes to scan against everyone in the entire country
27:34
Speaker 1: at this point, including mud shots, criminal histories, seven million
27:38
Speaker 1: people on record. That's not bad, including you, my friend. Yeah,
27:43
Speaker 1: you better keep that hanky on you at all times.
27:46
Speaker 1: Wiped down my print, your prints. I could also just
27:49
Speaker 1: stay on the straight and narrow. Oh yeah, that's true.
27:52
Speaker 1: I'll like you wipe my prints down? Is to be sure.
27:54
Speaker 1: Should we talk a little bit about other biometrics, even
27:57
Speaker 1: though we've covered some of the stuff. If you want
28:00
Speaker 1: I scans, they're really expensive there. Um, the retinas and
28:04
Speaker 1: the iris are also unique, but um, they're just super expensive.
28:08
Speaker 1: So the only place you're going to see those are
28:10
Speaker 1: like high security, like expensive facilities. Well, it depends. The
28:14
Speaker 1: retina scan is extremely detailed and tough. The iris scan
28:18
Speaker 1: supposedly is much quicker, and you're more likely to find those.
28:22
Speaker 1: Um it's cheaper to yeah, a little more prevalently, but
28:26
Speaker 1: still you're not gonna find that at your average parties. Um,
28:32
Speaker 1: what about Carl Jr? Though? Okay, ear scans. Apparently ears
28:37
Speaker 1: are unique in size and shape instructor as well. I
28:39
Speaker 1: think they used this too for scanning crowds as well.
28:42
Speaker 1: Like part official recognition is scan ears? Interesting? Yeah, slapdash
28:50
Speaker 1: scary boys. Fingerprints. Um, there's an audio lab the FBI
28:55
Speaker 1: operates in Quantico, Virginia. UM, and when there are messages
29:00
Speaker 1: from supposed known terrorists, they run it through their program
29:03
Speaker 1: and it does pretty good job. It's not like a fingerprint,
29:06
Speaker 1: but they can do a pretty good job with vocal analysis.
29:09
Speaker 1: At this point, you could also use this if you're,
29:11
Speaker 1: like say, um, contacting your bank in Geneva by phone.
29:16
Speaker 1: Your bank may use some sort of voice print analysis
29:20
Speaker 1: to say, okay, you're you single favorite song. I wonder
29:25
Speaker 1: if they do what they do, have you say yeah
29:27
Speaker 1: or do? I'm sure it's just your name, but it'd
29:29
Speaker 1: be funny if like they had you sing you give
29:34
Speaker 1: love a bad name all right by chuck? Uh? And
29:38
Speaker 1: then d N A of course. Um. There was just
29:41
Speaker 1: a ruling last week in the Supreme Court. They ruled
29:43
Speaker 1: five to four that DNA swabs can now be taken
29:47
Speaker 1: at the time of arrest for serious crimes. Um. Is
29:51
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? So for serious crimes. I thought the
29:55
Speaker 1: whole the whole row over the this was that it
29:58
Speaker 1: was like like it can just take him from anybody. Well,
30:02
Speaker 1: it's like it's just for serious crimes. The whole row
30:05
Speaker 1: is the fact that it's a police officer doing it
30:08
Speaker 1: and not a like you're not at the police station
30:11
Speaker 1: with a trained you know, d n A analysis analyst
30:15
Speaker 1: man and Allen nice what is wrong with me today? Yea.
30:24
Speaker 1: In the ruling they said that they've essentially found that
30:26
Speaker 1: it's the same thing as fingerprinting, So now cops are
30:29
Speaker 1: gonna have a little swab mouth swab kits in their cars.
30:32
Speaker 1: And uh, it was applied before ruling. It was close.
30:35
Speaker 1: And it's some people you know are up in arms
30:38
Speaker 1: about it, saying it's civil rights, uh infringement, and yeah,
30:43
Speaker 1: the end of privacy is what we're witnessing. Yeah, yeah,
30:48
Speaker 1: oh yeah. It's sad to see nobody, nobody's doing anything
30:53
Speaker 1: about it that that n s a whistleblower gave up
30:58
Speaker 1: his life basically, and everybody it's like, wow, I guess
31:01
Speaker 1: I always suspect that was going on anyway, right, you know,
31:06
Speaker 1: so anyway, um fingerprints, yes, you got anything else? I
31:10
Speaker 1: got nothing else. All right, Well, if you want to
31:12
Speaker 1: learn more about fingerprints, you can type that word into
31:15
Speaker 1: the search part how stuffworks dot com. And since I
31:18
Speaker 1: said search part, that means it's time for message break. Yeah,
31:27
Speaker 1: I know it's time for listening mail Josh, I'm gonna
31:31
Speaker 1: call this. UH. Let's let's help this uh young lady
31:34
Speaker 1: raise some money for cancer. We don't do this lot.
31:37
Speaker 1: We get a lot of requests and we can't do
31:38
Speaker 1: them all. We wish we could. But Whitney spoke to me.
31:42
Speaker 1: She's been listening for years. She's a big fan. She
31:44
Speaker 1: has started as an undergrad and now she is wrapping
31:48
Speaker 1: up her second year in law school at the Ohio
31:51
Speaker 1: State University. Couple of guys, Yeah, um, I know you
31:55
Speaker 1: like to hear about awesome charities. I wanted to share
31:57
Speaker 1: this unique one here in Columbus, Ohio. UH pellots Onya
32:00
Speaker 1: is a bike ride that raises money for life saving
32:02
Speaker 1: cancer research. Goes raised by writers goes to cancer research
32:07
Speaker 1: at the James Cancer Center at Ohio State. UM. It
32:10
Speaker 1: especial to me because my grandmother got cancer treatment at
32:13
Speaker 1: the James when she did not have health insurance, and
32:16
Speaker 1: she was proud that they could use her rare case
32:18
Speaker 1: to potentially help find a cure for others. Um Nancy
32:24
Speaker 1: passed away in two thousand eleven. She was fighting her cancer.
32:27
Speaker 1: In the course of a single day though the age
32:29
Speaker 1: of sixty five, she began having severe dementia like symptoms.
32:33
Speaker 1: We are not sure why. Symptoms left her unable to
32:36
Speaker 1: mentally compete with the cancer and without her willpower and
32:39
Speaker 1: understanding um that she had an extremely rare terminal cancel
32:42
Speaker 1: cancer to battle, her health went downhill quickly. Still, her
32:47
Speaker 1: inter dignity shine through, even with a drastic drop in
32:50
Speaker 1: body weight and repeated trips to the e R. So
32:52
Speaker 1: in memory of her grandmother, she is writing for charity.
32:57
Speaker 1: So she's raised two d and fifteen dollars right now.
33:00
Speaker 1: I think we should pump that up a little bit
33:02
Speaker 1: in our listeners. So I created a little tiny rol
33:05
Speaker 1: of her page um H T T P colon slash
33:09
Speaker 1: slash tiny rol dot com slash m r m k
33:15
Speaker 1: X six V. So that's m r m k x
33:19
Speaker 1: six v after tiny orl dot com and that is
33:22
Speaker 1: Whitney Bramlin's bike ride page. It goes down August tent,
33:26
Speaker 1: I believe, and that'd be cool if we did race
33:29
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33:34
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. So and you know, it's one of
33:36
Speaker 1: those things where you can get like five dollars if
33:38
Speaker 1: you want to, dude to skip that latte today, I say,
33:41
Speaker 1: and donate to Whitney's calls. Yeah, way to go Chuck.
33:44
Speaker 1: Wait you go, Whitney, Way to go Whitney, And way
33:47
Speaker 1: to go you for donating. We're proud of you already
33:49
Speaker 1: in advance, agreed. Uh, if you want to let us
33:52
Speaker 1: know about a charitable organization you care about, We're always
33:55
Speaker 1: down with that. We'll try to let everybody know about it.
33:57
Speaker 1: In turn. Um, you can tweet to us at s
34:00
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34:05
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34:07
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34:09
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34:15
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34:17
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34:29
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