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New World Order Title: Technology gives police on the street instant ID info COLUMBUS, Ohio — With a quick imprint of a suspect's two fingers on a handheld device, Columbus police can get instant access to an individual's identity without a trip to the booking office. The department announced Monday it is testing 40 of the RapID wireless units it purchased recently for about $3,000 each using a federal Homeland Security grant. Police say the new technology saves time by eliminating a trip to a downtown booking station. Typically, it would be used to check the identity of someone without proper ID who uses a name police suspect is not real. A person might not necessarily be arrested as a result of the check, but could be issued a summons or citation depending on the reason they were questioned. The system checks the fingerprints against existing prints in a Columbus police database, which includes about 250,000 entries. If the system gets a match, the officer will receive the person's real name, date of birth, gender and race. Taking a suspect whose identity is questioned for fingerprinting can take more than an hour, a drawback on busy shifts when police are needed on the streets, said Beth Owens, project manager of the Columbus police department's Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The new system, she said, "gets them back out on the street so they can answer more calls for service." The city is testing 20 of the units over the next several months and providing the other 20 to suburban departments. It will cost about $20 per month per unit for cellular phone contracts used to operate the devices, which are made by Tacoma, Wash.-based Sagem Morpho Inc. The devices take advantage of the rapidly expanding biometrics industry which allows for fingerprint identification on everything from laptop computers to cell phones. The use by law enforcement is expanding as the cost of the hardware needed to run the devices drops, said Bud Yanak, marketing vice president for Bio-Key International, a leading provider of software for mobile devices used by police departments. The cost of fingerprint sensors alone have dropped from about $100 to about $5, said Yanak. Devices like the RapID save police time and money, he said. "And in the end it saves their lives, because they don't let the bad guy go." Civil liberties groups are keeping an eye on the technology, worried it could be used to harass people rather than make legitimate identity checks. "When it's portable it's easier to abuse than if you actually have to get somebody arrested and taken down to the station," said Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Owens said a positive match is only a first step for an officer using the device, which she emphasizes is simply another law enforcement tool. "I tell all the officers, 'If you have a hit, the most important thing for you to do is call and get that hit verified,'" she said.
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