August 1, 2013 • 34 mins
The Babylonians, one of the earliest civilizations, were the first to use fingerprints to differentiate people, but it wasn't until the 19th century that prints were used for crime fighting. Ever since, analyzing, classifying and collecting fingerprints to catch criminals and positively identify people has advanced, but is it valid?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Stuffy Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and
there's some papers in front of me, and then I
key a lamp and a big old microphone and it's
all pressing in on me really hard. That means this
(00:23):
is stuff you should know. That means Josh has gone
on vacations. When the microphone is the size of a watermelon,
it's just hitting you in the face. Yeah, I'm like,
it doesn't normally a braid my chin is today. So yeah, Chuck, Josh,
how are you doing. I'm great. You get some fingerprints there?
Let me see you. Um, I have four on my
(00:48):
fingers and one each on each thumb. Yeah, are you're
one of those guys on um Oh, let me tell
you a little story about where your little fingerprints came from,
back when Chuck, little Chuck was just a ten week
old fetus. Okay, so nineteen seventy it's a certain point
in nineteen seventy. Well, if I was born in March
(01:09):
seventy one, and that would go back, just go back
nine months from there. Okay, whatever that is, uh nine seventy.
So your your little basil cell layer of your skin.
You got three. You got the epidermis, the outer layer,
the basil layer, which is in between that's like that
where all the new skin cells are produced. Then there's
a dermist below that. Those are your three layers. About
(01:33):
that time, your little basil layer started going haywire, producing
skin cells at a much faster rate than your epidermis
and your dermist, which meant that your basil layer was
growing up against your epidermis and your dermists squishing together. Yeah.
And so when this would happen, when it would grow
up against say you're your epidermis, it would create a
(01:57):
point of contact, and that point of content act would
create enough pressure so that your basil layer would buckle
a little bit. And what's weird about that was that
your little basil layer buckled in what appeared to be
little patterns, little worlds, little swoops, little circles. But what's neat,
chuck is at this point, within the next six weeks
(02:20):
after it started, you had fingerprints that are going to
stay the same for the rest of your life, just
beneath your epidermis. Yeah, the tiny little chuck fingers are
now sort of tiny little man fingers, but they are
the same fingerprints throughout my entire line. That's right, And
you can it's true damage your fingerprints. Some people have purposely,
(02:44):
which we'll talk about, but for the most part, since
it's your basil layer, that's where the actual fingerprint is.
Even if you cut your epidermis, which happens, your skin
will grow back in your basil layer will remain the same.
Your fingerprints will remain the same. That's a great way
to end this good night. Uh that was a great
(03:04):
little story. And I would grow up to be a
sociopath podcaster with those very same fingerprints. I don't think
you're sociopathic. I'm just kidding. Um, So we're talking fingerprints,
and you mentioned the little ridges, little worlds, and we're
not making these words up. W H O R L
S is actually what it's called worlds. Valleys and uh
(03:28):
loops loops, arches, arches. Those are three. I don't know
where you got valleys. Um, well, it's a in the pattern.
But that's not a part of the official fingerprints fingerprint
classic cases. No, no no, no, no, that's not a part
of the classic Um, but each are unique. And we
all know this because you know that's why they use
fingerprinting as one of the biometric UH sciences to classify
(03:52):
people and identify people. Um, there's a one in sixty
four billion chance that your finger fingerprint will match exactly
with someone. So get this. Sir Francis Galton was the
one who said that, and he was saying that through
his classification system legally speaking, as far as what would
be admissible in court, probably there would be a one
(04:14):
and sixty four chance of matching people's fingerprints up. He
also he also thought that if you went down on
more of a a more granular level and looked at
people's fingerprints, there were probably a better chance that people
would have fingerprints who matched. And if you take Galton's
(04:36):
kind of liberal view of matching fingerprints, and you have
a one and sixty four billion chance of having matching
fingerprints with somebody just looking like that's somebody just looking
at the patterns. Um. Since about a hundred billion people
have lived in the history of humanity, that means that
(04:56):
there's at least one pair of people who have ever
lived who had the same fingerprints. And that's if you
subscribe to his numbers. Yeah from eighteen whatever, which may
be overestimating it are we are fingerprints may be slightly
more similar than you think. Interesting. Yeah, well they are
more unique than DNA, because we all know if you
(05:17):
listen to the Twins podcast that twins can share a
lot of DNA, but they can't share fingerprints. No, it's different,
it's very different. Um, all right, so let's get into this. Fingerprints,
um are actually made of ridges called friction ridges, and
they have little pores underneath them, and it's the pores
where you leak like sweat and oils, and that's actually
(05:38):
what the mark you are leaving as a fingerprint is
coming up through those pores at those friction ridges. You're
not leaving skin behind, No, you're just leaving a little
bit of steam, that's right. And they're really popular way
of uh, probably the most popular biometric right now because
everyone's leaving fingerprints. Everyone's got fingers, well not everyone. They're
(06:02):
easy to classify, they're easy to sort. Um. They do
mention this article that like you could probably do the
same thing with like toe prints, but um, no one
wants to ask all these criminals to take off their
shoes and socks and like toe prints, especially not if
they just defecated in the back seat of the police cruiser. Plus,
you're more likely and they even mentioned this in the article,
you're more likely to leave a fingerprint than a toe print.
(06:22):
They don't even put that in here. A lot of
people that was the most obvious. Uh yeah, you know,
you're not gonna commit a crime barefoot, and some people do.
But it's necessary. But nowadays it's virtually too late because
we've amassed such a database of fingerprints that, like a
(06:42):
bare footprint would be almost useless unless you had the
person in the suspect. It was about one and every
six people have their fingerprints on record. Yeah, and that
doesn't mean that one and every six people have been
charged with the crime. But there's a lot of ways
that fingerprints make it into the fingerprint database. Aphis uh yeah,
what people use them as a signature verifications these days,
(07:06):
as um to identify victims, um job applications. Sometimes the
first time mine made it in because my dad took
me to the public library to have me fingerprinted as
a child. Really yeah, it's just so now that like
we have your kid on file in case he ever
goes missing. Yep. After that whole Adam Walsh thing. That
was it, like anything anybody said like this could help
(07:28):
if your kid is kidnapped or whatever. Parents just did
it in the early eighties. My parents did. No. No,
I don't think I'm on file anywhere. Really with my fingerprints?
That's good, is it? I guess so? Sure? Man, your
fingerprints are your own? Yeah? Maybe so. Um, and that
is one in six people. And apparently the iPhone five
(07:48):
s the rumor is is it is going to have
fingerprint authentification instead of your pass code. Wow, it's pretty neat.
We'll see. That's the rumor. We used to have laptops
here that had that. Well, yeah you did. I'd never
use mine. Yeah I did. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah.
Thumb print right, Uh, whatever you wanted. I think it
was really either your thumb, your fore finger, or your
(08:10):
middle finger. I would have done my bigtoe right. It
would have been like, isn't it obvious? Um, there's I
guess cars. Some cars now have birometric Um. I guess ignitions. Yeah,
and we might as well talk about why that stinks. Yeah,
because in Malaysia. Yeah, in Malaysia, they cut off a
(08:30):
guy's finger to get into his Mercedes. And that is
a worry for police as fingerprinting becomes more and more
used as authentification, uh that people are gonna start cutting
fingers off to do so did you say authentification, authentification, authentication, authentication?
What do you add in another syllable? Oh? Boy? So, hey,
(08:53):
don't get on me about words. Yeah I can't. Okay, Um,
there's one that won't bring up what the deletrius deleterious.
I just say it in my own way. No, deletrious
this is not a word. It is. You're deleting it.
It deletes things. It's negative, all right. So, um, and
(09:15):
if you off this case. Uh so the biometric companies
who said, well, we can't have our customers fingers being
cut off, said well, now we'll just add a little
something that the texts blood flow. So now our customers
are just kidnapped rather than have their fingers cut off
or the the kidnapper doesn't know this. And you you
still have your car, but you're out of finger right.
(09:37):
You should probably put like that kind of thing on
ads on busses, yeah, or put it on your car like,
oh yeah, car will not start. A finger is detached. Yeah,
because think about that could be even worse if their finger.
If the finger doesn't work, they're like, oh, maybe it's
his other finger. Just keep cutting fingers off and you're like, no,
it needs a pulse. Alright. So we talked about the
(09:57):
friction ridges. Yeah, they're called f Just remember because they
buck up buckle under the pressure. The friction up against
the dermis that can take the pressure. Buckles. Um. But
the forms a specific pattern and this is what you know.
The arrangement shape and size and number of lines is
what they're looking for when they're identifying and comparing these things.
(10:18):
And there's three different patterns there can be. Uh, there's
loops begins on one side, curves up and around and
exits the other. Yeah, look at your fingers while we describe.
There are radio loops and owner loops, um radial slope
toward the thumb, owner towards the little finger, and intuitive
to tell which way that the slope is going. Oh yeah,
(10:39):
just yeah, because technically you could be like, well no,
I think it's so much way to turn your head.
The aforementioned whirls are circular or spiral in nature, and
arches slope up and then down like, and they're described
here as narrow mountains. Yeah, it just goes. I think
that summed it up. So those are the identifying marks
(11:01):
on your fingers, um that you can see the naked eye.
And then if you're in law enforcement, they're gonna be
also analyzing something called minutia, which you can't see with
the naked eye. No. And these are basically like further
characteristics of the loops and worlds and arches. So you
might you might have a spur, which is another um
like world that comes off of a larger whirl um.
(11:24):
Or there's an abrupt end to a ridge, or there's
bifurcation or islands. It's like a world within a world. Um.
There's deltas, which are like ridges that form like y patterns,
just a little stuff like that, and they all form
this classification system that the cops rely on when they
fingerprint you. And the the science, the forensic science of
(11:46):
fingerprinting is called deactyloscopy. That's right, like pterodactyl um. And
I guess there are probably some places still that do
it the old fashioned way UM and don't have digital
scanning finger methods. Montana hello, Montana, Um. They would do
it like you've seen it on countless TV shows and movies.
(12:08):
They would clean your hand off, dry it off with alcohol. Yeah,
they want to get all the sea bulm off, get
all the sum off, roll the fingertip um, and then
I usually say left or right, but I imagine you
could do either way to get the ink on the finger.
Make sure it's fully covered. Then you roll onto the
card from fingernail to fingernail, from one side to the other.
(12:32):
That is called a rolled fingerprint. Yeah. You do this
with all eight fingers and two thumbs and uh, then
you've got your set of rolled prints. Then they take
your hands and cover all your fingers with the ink
and then just have you press it down flat at
the bottom of this fingerprint card. And uh, those are
that's a set of flat prints which are used apparently
(12:53):
to um verify the uh um yeah, exactly to say
they have two sets basically, yeah. Um. If you live
in the modern world and you live in a large city,
you're probably gonna have digital scanners doing the same thing. Um.
It's an optical scanner that basically put your fingers on
(13:15):
there and it through magic converts that into digital data
patterns and then they have programs that map those points
and basically it's sort of like you see in the movies. Yeah,
and what's neat about the optical scanners. The picture that
it makes is the inverse. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense,
(13:36):
So you're uh to negative image, right. The the the
the worlds and everything had more light bounce off of them,
so they tend to be lighter. Um, whereas like the
valleys and everything in between, the friction ridges are darker.
And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say
it's more accurate than rolled prints. I might be wrong,
You're probably right from what I've read. Sure, Yeah, because
(13:59):
you know when someone's like you ever seen First Blood? No? Yeah,
you have stallone the Vampire Show? No, No, that's true Blood,
first Blood. The Rambo first printure. Remember when he was
being difficult when they were booking him and he wasn't
doing the fingerprinting right right, They couldn't get good prints
because Rambo wouldn't stand for it. No, he doesn't take
(14:21):
any crap, all right. There's two types of prints visible
prints that we talked of. Um, actually we didn't talk
about him there there if you actually leave an intention
in something, a visible print like dirt or clay or
something blood or something like that. Blood would be a
good example. It's visible. You can look and say there's
a fingerprint exactly. There's also latent prints, which we leave
(14:42):
everywhere all the time. Um. And those are the ones
that are just made with the sea bum coming out
of our fingers, the pores on our friction ridges, and
those are typically not necessarily naked to the the human eye.
Like if you look at like, yes, stainless steel, you'll
probably see some pressure clear class maybe right, But those
are technically latent prints. Um. They also can be um
(15:06):
invisible to the naked eye, and so they have to
be um dusted. Yeah, and they actually do dust with
a little brush. UM. I looked up the dusting powder
fingerprinting powder, and apparently most of it these days is proprietary,
so like you don't know exactly what's in it, really,
I just guess like carbon, who knows. Maybe I know
(15:27):
you should formulate your own Josh's fingerprinting caller, you know,
market it to some local harmfulks enforcement agencies. Yeah, I'll
sell it like snake oil or something like Uncle Peppi's
patented a one blue ribbon fingerprinting. Uh so they lift
the prints, um, these latent prints, and those are the
obviously the prints too that you see criminals and TV
(15:49):
shows and movies always trying to wipe off with a hanky, right,
very wisely, Yeah, I wonder if what the if that
really works? You want to get into that, do you know? Yes,
it should Okay, it should work from what I understand.
I read this one paper that was basically like, we
should not be using fingerprints in court any longer. That
(16:13):
first of all, we have DNA now, and DNA is objective.
It's like this protein sequence is the same as this
protein sequence. Right with fingerprinting is subjective, even though there's
an extensive classification system, it's I think that this print
matches up to this print. There's not. It's not quantitative,
(16:34):
or if it is, it's not enough quantitative enough. Also,
there's so much faith placed by the public in fingerprint
analysis that fingerprinting people who do this work frequently are
matching stuff like they're they're taking a great role print
(16:55):
and comparing it to like just the worst smudge print
on the planet, where you know, you can be like,
I don't get that because I'm not a dactyloscopist. But
I'm sure that somebody who who is that could could
figure this out. And supposedly that's a lot of faith
that we're placing into people, and that now that DNA
evidence is becoming more and more UM available and prevalent
(17:16):
and widespread, it's starting to show like um fingerprinting is
actually probably put a lot of innocent people behind bars,
and we really shouldn't rely on it anymore because even
even if you have a great print that you took
a latent print, right yeah, and there are plenty like
they're not shysters or frauds or crooks because even within
(17:38):
their profession, a lot of them are like there's a
lot of recklessness going on here. Um that you're never
going to have a really great latent print. It's never
gonna be good, and so you're working from a deficit
every time, and you're also comparing it to a role print,
and a roll print is also not the same as
(17:59):
another rolled print made right after. Like you can take
somebody's finger and roll it from fingernails, fingernail, pick it up,
put it on the next little box, roll the same
finger from fingernail, the fingernail and you're going to have
basically two different prints. So that's in the olden days
before they had the digital scanning though, right, But those
are still a lot of the ones on file imagine. Yes,
And I feel like we're probably still dealing with the
(18:22):
same deficits. The paper I read was from like two
thousand five or seven, so it's not like it was
old and they're they're saying like this is still going
on with the advent of digital scanning. Plus, I think
you know as well as I do, when you're a
court and the attorney yells at the top of his
lungs his fingerprints were found all over the murder scene,
your your toast, well, yeah, and I think that a
lot of perpetrators to think that, like if they have
(18:46):
your prints but you're dead, that's it, and like they
have you dead to rights, so you might as well confess.
And I'm sure it's a great tool for confessing. Yeah.
I wonder if d n A thwarts I wonder if
anything like that actually thwarts people from committing crimes. You know,
I wonder if anyone ever stops and goes, boy, now
a d n A. I would think you can just
wipe down a crime scene, Like if I drop a
hair on the carpet, then I could be, you know, nabbed.
(19:09):
Sure I would think that's a pretty good deterrent. Yeah,
I just don't know in the criminal mind how how
that operates. I'm sure it makes them operate a lot
less sloppy than I used to. You know, that's a
good point. All right, Let's talk a little bit about
the history, because it's pretty interesting. I think, um that
in ancient Babylon they actually uh press fingertips and clay
(19:29):
to for some business transactions. Pretty advanced. I mean, thousands
of years ago people already understood like if fingertips are unique,
and of course the Chinese we're always ahead of the
game on everything. It seemed like they actually used ink
on paper for business transactions and help identify their kids,
like my dad. Yeah, I thought it was kind of weird, though,
(19:49):
can you un identify your child? Oh well, if they
grow up, if they're kidnapped and take into another village,
I guess, so they grow up in return to claim
of birthright. Yeah, that's a good point. Sure. Um, it
wasn't until they didn't use them for identifying criminals until
the nineteenth century and there's a series of events that's
(20:10):
sort of just not necessarily connected, happened one after the
other to sort of advance it at the same time.
The first eight was a guy named Sir William Herschel,
and Englishman who was chief magistrate of the Hoogli District
in India, and he started recording fingerprints when signing documents.
(20:32):
So that's kind of the first thing, right. Then you
mentioned Henry Faulds. He came around next, Scottish doctor. Yeah,
he was, Um, I guess he got into Japanese pottery
and noticed like the fingerprints left behind by the artists,
and um, he started getting into fingerprinting. So he wanted
to create a classification system and said, I'm not gonna
do it myself. I'm cousins to Charles Darwin all this
(20:54):
asked him to do it. He's pretty good at that,
and Darwin said, I'm kind of busy, but I have
another cousin. His name is Sir Francis Galton, and he's
going to be into this. Galton here's a eugenicist. I
wonder if Darwin was like, oh god, it's you know,
another classification Henry again, I almos pass him off. The cousin,
(21:16):
cousin Frank, Yeah, be cousin Frank. So, like you said,
he was augenicist, um and he got I feel like
we talked about him before he pops up here there,
just pretty big in um in this era. Yeah, he
was the first dude to really start kind of collecting
biometric information on people, um, not just fingerprints, all kinds
(21:37):
of stuff. And being a eugenicist, he decided that there
was a perfect human and we should selectively breed ourselves.
That's right. Yeah, we're not promoting his work by the way. Um,
although in two he wrote a book called Fingerprints and
he outlined his systems, first time it had ever been done,
and it was based on the system we know today
(21:59):
archist loops and roles. Uh. And then in France, the
guy named Alfonse Bertillon. Now he's made maybe four appearances
in our podcast before I knew I knew that name. Um,
he was at the same time using his own system
called bert Bertiel nage and uh, anthropometry is basically what
(22:20):
he was doing. Yeah, because remember he was like working
in the Paris police department and like he saw the
same criminals come and go, but they use aliases. So
he devised the system of like measuring their face and
head in their tears and all that. Definitely sketches. He
was definitely that one. Yeah, definitely UM. And he one
of them also was fingerprinting too, but his his system
(22:40):
was extremely exhaustive, even though it was adopted by the
London police. I believe it was just all it was
really time consuming, sure, but he was advancing the art,
like eight of them at once. Uh. And then about
the same time in Argentina, UM, a police officer named
Juan Uh. You wanna try that a it sounds good,
(23:01):
doesn't sound Argentinian, but Umo, he actually used fingerprinting. This
is a two in a case to convict a mother
who had killed her two kids, when in fact she
was saying it was her her boyfriend. He actually matched
fingerprints and she confessed and like he had her first
case right, there were actually being used in uh to
(23:24):
convict a criminal. Yeah, that was the first time it
ever happened. Two and Buenos Aires, UM, I think what
The following year eree a guy named Sir Edward Henry.
He was the commissioner of the police department. He became
interested in using fingerprinting to fight crimes. UM. And he
came up with a classification system that further extended Galton's UM.
(23:50):
So he came up with, I believe the minutia and UM,
I guess the kind of the comparable points that we
rely on still today. It's called the henrylassification system. And
when you see on tv UM, you know, a fingerprint
fed into a computer and like it flashes through for
some reason all of the fingerprints that it's matching them
(24:12):
against that is using the Henry classification system that this
guy created in that's pretty awesome. Uh. In nineteen o one,
Scotland Yard established the Fingerprint Bureau, it's first one, and
then they used them as evidence the following year for
the first time, and then the year after that in
New York they started using it in state prisons. And
then the FBI said it's not a bad idea, let's
(24:33):
get on board exactly, So everybody's getting on board. The
Henry system like really allowed a system of classification that
could be used anywhere UM to be devised, and it
was adopted. The problem was it was extremely time consuming too. Yeah,
you're matching paper to paper basically, and you're doing it
(24:54):
with a magnifying glass. Yeah, that the computer systems that
we see today on TV, those are going through you know, millions, say, um,
possible matches. Even if you had like a thousand, how
many detectives would it take to just look through a
set of prints, your control prints and then you know,
(25:14):
another print to find a killer or something like that
from a latent print. Yeah, they call it minutia for
a reason. Exactly. Imagine those guys went kind of nuts, um,
And that's if they even had a fingerprint on file,
like they were counting on someone having because at the time,
you know, it was only criminals had figger prints. Well,
(25:35):
they probably were like, this looks like a man's thumb print.
Let's go through all the thumb prints of the men
we have on file and see if we can catch somebody. Thummy,
it was much better if like you could catch a suspect,
print them and then compare it. But that's you know,
not necessarily what they were doing. Luckily, we created computers
to be our mindless slaves at this kind of stuff,
(25:57):
and starting around the seventies, Yeah, and Japan was their
national police agency, was the first one to use this
kind of automation. In the nineteen eighties and they created
the Automated Fingerprint Identification systems APISTS. Its slogan was warm,
fuzzy happiness. That's what it says in quotes in their name,
the Automated Fingerprinting Concern. Uh so they used it in
(26:22):
the US UM to too great effect. Although the problem
was it wasn't integrated, Like you know, they didn't share
information between agencies or between districts of of law enforcement.
So you're kind of just stuck with whoever you had
on file, right like, even though it was computerized. A yeah, yeah,
a particular police department, maybe even a statewide police department
(26:45):
if you're luck, could buy APHIST an apist system. Yeah,
but like that was your APHIST system. Fortunately, the FBI said, hey,
there's this awesome thing called the Internet. Yeah I should
I say, fortunately if you're a criminal, not necessarily fortunately,
or you're in the privacy and all that. Um. But they,
the FBI and I think UM created the Integrated APHIS UM,
(27:06):
which basically plugged all of these databases together and created
one huge database that the FBI maintains screwed up. Their
acronym though, i aphis Yeah it's terrible. UM. So yeah,
now there's one in six Americans who has their fingerprints
on file and i aphis yea, and I think they
(27:27):
say it takes a about thirty minutes as little as
thirty minutes to scan against everyone in the entire country
at this point, including mud shots, criminal histories, seven million
people on record. That's not bad, including you, my friend. Yeah,
you better keep that hanky on you at all times.
Wiped down my print, your prints. I could also just
(27:49):
stay on the straight and narrow. Oh yeah, that's true.
I'll like you wipe my prints down? Is to be sure.
Should we talk a little bit about other biometrics, even
though we've covered some of the stuff. If you want
I scans, they're really expensive there. Um, the retinas and
the iris are also unique, but um, they're just super expensive.
So the only place you're going to see those are
(28:10):
like high security, like expensive facilities. Well, it depends. The
retina scan is extremely detailed and tough. The iris scan
supposedly is much quicker, and you're more likely to find those.
Um it's cheaper to yeah, a little more prevalently, but
still you're not gonna find that at your average parties. Um,
(28:32):
what about Carl Jr? Though? Okay, ear scans. Apparently ears
are unique in size and shape instructor as well. I
think they used this too for scanning crowds as well.
Like part official recognition is scan ears? Interesting? Yeah, slapdash
scary boys. Fingerprints. Um, there's an audio lab the FBI
(28:55):
operates in Quantico, Virginia. UM, and when there are messages
from supposed known terrorists, they run it through their program
and it does pretty good job. It's not like a fingerprint,
but they can do a pretty good job with vocal analysis.
At this point, you could also use this if you're,
like say, um, contacting your bank in Geneva by phone.
(29:16):
Your bank may use some sort of voice print analysis
to say, okay, you're you single favorite song. I wonder
if they do what they do, have you say yeah
or do? I'm sure it's just your name, but it'd
be funny if like they had you sing you give
love a bad name all right by chuck? Uh? And
(29:38):
then d N A of course. Um. There was just
a ruling last week in the Supreme Court. They ruled
five to four that DNA swabs can now be taken
at the time of arrest for serious crimes. Um. Is
that right? Yeah? So for serious crimes. I thought the
whole the whole row over the this was that it
was like like it can just take him from anybody. Well,
(30:02):
it's like it's just for serious crimes. The whole row
is the fact that it's a police officer doing it
and not a like you're not at the police station
with a trained you know, d n A analysis analyst
man and Allen nice what is wrong with me today? Yea.
(30:24):
In the ruling they said that they've essentially found that
it's the same thing as fingerprinting, So now cops are
gonna have a little swab mouth swab kits in their cars.
And uh, it was applied before ruling. It was close.
And it's some people you know are up in arms
about it, saying it's civil rights, uh infringement, and yeah,
the end of privacy is what we're witnessing. Yeah, yeah,
(30:48):
oh yeah. It's sad to see nobody, nobody's doing anything
about it that that n s a whistleblower gave up
his life basically, and everybody it's like, wow, I guess
I always suspect that was going on anyway, right, you know,
so anyway, um fingerprints, yes, you got anything else? I
(31:10):
got nothing else. All right, Well, if you want to
learn more about fingerprints, you can type that word into
the search part how stuffworks dot com. And since I
said search part, that means it's time for message break. Yeah,
I know it's time for listening mail Josh, I'm gonna
(31:31):
call this. UH. Let's let's help this uh young lady
raise some money for cancer. We don't do this lot.
We get a lot of requests and we can't do
them all. We wish we could. But Whitney spoke to me.
She's been listening for years. She's a big fan. She
has started as an undergrad and now she is wrapping
up her second year in law school at the Ohio
State University. Couple of guys, Yeah, um, I know you
(31:55):
like to hear about awesome charities. I wanted to share
this unique one here in Columbus, Ohio. UH pellots Onya
is a bike ride that raises money for life saving
cancer research. Goes raised by writers goes to cancer research
at the James Cancer Center at Ohio State. UM. It
especial to me because my grandmother got cancer treatment at
the James when she did not have health insurance, and
(32:16):
she was proud that they could use her rare case
to potentially help find a cure for others. Um Nancy
passed away in two thousand eleven. She was fighting her cancer.
In the course of a single day though the age
of sixty five, she began having severe dementia like symptoms.
We are not sure why. Symptoms left her unable to
mentally compete with the cancer and without her willpower and
(32:39):
understanding um that she had an extremely rare terminal cancel
cancer to battle, her health went downhill quickly. Still, her
inter dignity shine through, even with a drastic drop in
body weight and repeated trips to the e R. So
in memory of her grandmother, she is writing for charity.
So she's raised two d and fifteen dollars right now.
(33:00):
I think we should pump that up a little bit
in our listeners. So I created a little tiny rol
of her page um H T T P colon slash
slash tiny rol dot com slash m r m k
X six V. So that's m r m k x
six v after tiny orl dot com and that is
(33:22):
Whitney Bramlin's bike ride page. It goes down August tent,
I believe, and that'd be cool if we did race
all extra dough for her. Yeah, everybody gets to there.
That's pretty good. So and you know, it's one of
those things where you can get like five dollars if
you want to, dude to skip that latte today, I say,
and donate to Whitney's calls. Yeah, way to go Chuck.
(33:44):
Wait you go, Whitney, Way to go Whitney, And way
to go you for donating. We're proud of you already
in advance, agreed. Uh, if you want to let us
know about a charitable organization you care about, We're always
down with that. We'll try to let everybody know about it.
In turn. Um, you can tweet to us at s
Y s G podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, Slash you Should Know. You can send us
(34:05):
an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
you can join us at our home on the web.
That's Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how Stuff
works dot com. This episode of Stuff you Should Know
(34:29):
is brought to you by YouTube geek Week. Tune end,
define your channels at YouTube dot com. Slash Geek Week
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Stuffy Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and
there's some papers in front of me, and then I
key a lamp and a big old microphone and it's
all pressing in on me really hard. That means this
(00:23):
is stuff you should know. That means Josh has gone
on vacations. When the microphone is the size of a watermelon,
it's just hitting you in the face. Yeah, I'm like,
it doesn't normally a braid my chin is today. So yeah, Chuck, Josh,
how are you doing. I'm great. You get some fingerprints there?
Let me see you. Um, I have four on my
(00:48):
fingers and one each on each thumb. Yeah, are you're
one of those guys on um Oh, let me tell
you a little story about where your little fingerprints came from,
back when Chuck, little Chuck was just a ten week
old fetus. Okay, so nineteen seventy it's a certain point
in nineteen seventy. Well, if I was born in March
(01:09):
seventy one, and that would go back, just go back
nine months from there. Okay, whatever that is, uh nine seventy.
So your your little basil cell layer of your skin.
You got three. You got the epidermis, the outer layer,
the basil layer, which is in between that's like that
where all the new skin cells are produced. Then there's
a dermist below that. Those are your three layers. About
(01:33):
that time, your little basil layer started going haywire, producing
skin cells at a much faster rate than your epidermis
and your dermist, which meant that your basil layer was
growing up against your epidermis and your dermists squishing together. Yeah.
And so when this would happen, when it would grow
up against say you're your epidermis, it would create a
(01:57):
point of contact, and that point of content act would
create enough pressure so that your basil layer would buckle
a little bit. And what's weird about that was that
your little basil layer buckled in what appeared to be
little patterns, little worlds, little swoops, little circles. But what's neat,
chuck is at this point, within the next six weeks
(02:20):
after it started, you had fingerprints that are going to
stay the same for the rest of your life, just
beneath your epidermis. Yeah, the tiny little chuck fingers are
now sort of tiny little man fingers, but they are
the same fingerprints throughout my entire line. That's right, And
you can it's true damage your fingerprints. Some people have purposely,
(02:44):
which we'll talk about, but for the most part, since
it's your basil layer, that's where the actual fingerprint is.
Even if you cut your epidermis, which happens, your skin
will grow back in your basil layer will remain the same.
Your fingerprints will remain the same. That's a great way
to end this good night. Uh that was a great
(03:04):
little story. And I would grow up to be a
sociopath podcaster with those very same fingerprints. I don't think
you're sociopathic. I'm just kidding. Um, So we're talking fingerprints,
and you mentioned the little ridges, little worlds, and we're
not making these words up. W H O R L
S is actually what it's called worlds. Valleys and uh
(03:28):
loops loops, arches, arches. Those are three. I don't know
where you got valleys. Um, well, it's a in the pattern.
But that's not a part of the official fingerprints fingerprint
classic cases. No, no no, no, no, that's not a part
of the classic Um, but each are unique. And we
all know this because you know that's why they use
fingerprinting as one of the biometric UH sciences to classify
(03:52):
people and identify people. Um, there's a one in sixty
four billion chance that your finger fingerprint will match exactly
with someone. So get this. Sir Francis Galton was the
one who said that, and he was saying that through
his classification system legally speaking, as far as what would
be admissible in court, probably there would be a one
(04:14):
and sixty four chance of matching people's fingerprints up. He
also he also thought that if you went down on
more of a a more granular level and looked at
people's fingerprints, there were probably a better chance that people
would have fingerprints who matched. And if you take Galton's
(04:36):
kind of liberal view of matching fingerprints, and you have
a one and sixty four billion chance of having matching
fingerprints with somebody just looking like that's somebody just looking
at the patterns. Um. Since about a hundred billion people
have lived in the history of humanity, that means that
(04:56):
there's at least one pair of people who have ever
lived who had the same fingerprints. And that's if you
subscribe to his numbers. Yeah from eighteen whatever, which may
be overestimating it are we are fingerprints may be slightly
more similar than you think. Interesting. Yeah, well they are
more unique than DNA, because we all know if you
(05:17):
listen to the Twins podcast that twins can share a
lot of DNA, but they can't share fingerprints. No, it's different,
it's very different. Um, all right, so let's get into this. Fingerprints,
um are actually made of ridges called friction ridges, and
they have little pores underneath them, and it's the pores
where you leak like sweat and oils, and that's actually
(05:38):
what the mark you are leaving as a fingerprint is
coming up through those pores at those friction ridges. You're
not leaving skin behind, No, you're just leaving a little
bit of steam, that's right. And they're really popular way
of uh, probably the most popular biometric right now because
everyone's leaving fingerprints. Everyone's got fingers, well not everyone. They're
(06:02):
easy to classify, they're easy to sort. Um. They do
mention this article that like you could probably do the
same thing with like toe prints, but um, no one
wants to ask all these criminals to take off their
shoes and socks and like toe prints, especially not if
they just defecated in the back seat of the police cruiser. Plus,
you're more likely and they even mentioned this in the article,
you're more likely to leave a fingerprint than a toe print.
(06:22):
They don't even put that in here. A lot of
people that was the most obvious. Uh yeah, you know,
you're not gonna commit a crime barefoot, and some people do.
But it's necessary. But nowadays it's virtually too late because
we've amassed such a database of fingerprints that, like a
(06:42):
bare footprint would be almost useless unless you had the
person in the suspect. It was about one and every
six people have their fingerprints on record. Yeah, and that
doesn't mean that one and every six people have been
charged with the crime. But there's a lot of ways
that fingerprints make it into the fingerprint database. Aphis uh yeah,
what people use them as a signature verifications these days,
(07:06):
as um to identify victims, um job applications. Sometimes the
first time mine made it in because my dad took
me to the public library to have me fingerprinted as
a child. Really yeah, it's just so now that like
we have your kid on file in case he ever
goes missing. Yep. After that whole Adam Walsh thing. That
was it, like anything anybody said like this could help
(07:28):
if your kid is kidnapped or whatever. Parents just did
it in the early eighties. My parents did. No. No,
I don't think I'm on file anywhere. Really with my fingerprints?
That's good, is it? I guess so? Sure? Man, your
fingerprints are your own? Yeah? Maybe so. Um, and that
is one in six people. And apparently the iPhone five
(07:48):
s the rumor is is it is going to have
fingerprint authentification instead of your pass code. Wow, it's pretty neat.
We'll see. That's the rumor. We used to have laptops
here that had that. Well, yeah you did. I'd never
use mine. Yeah I did. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah.
Thumb print right, Uh, whatever you wanted. I think it
was really either your thumb, your fore finger, or your
(08:10):
middle finger. I would have done my bigtoe right. It
would have been like, isn't it obvious? Um, there's I
guess cars. Some cars now have birometric Um. I guess ignitions. Yeah,
and we might as well talk about why that stinks. Yeah,
because in Malaysia. Yeah, in Malaysia, they cut off a
(08:30):
guy's finger to get into his Mercedes. And that is
a worry for police as fingerprinting becomes more and more
used as authentification, uh that people are gonna start cutting
fingers off to do so did you say authentification, authentification, authentication, authentication?
What do you add in another syllable? Oh? Boy? So, hey,
(08:53):
don't get on me about words. Yeah I can't. Okay, Um,
there's one that won't bring up what the deletrius deleterious.
I just say it in my own way. No, deletrious
this is not a word. It is. You're deleting it.
It deletes things. It's negative, all right. So, um, and
(09:15):
if you off this case. Uh so the biometric companies
who said, well, we can't have our customers fingers being
cut off, said well, now we'll just add a little
something that the texts blood flow. So now our customers
are just kidnapped rather than have their fingers cut off
or the the kidnapper doesn't know this. And you you
still have your car, but you're out of finger right.
(09:37):
You should probably put like that kind of thing on
ads on busses, yeah, or put it on your car like,
oh yeah, car will not start. A finger is detached. Yeah,
because think about that could be even worse if their finger.
If the finger doesn't work, they're like, oh, maybe it's
his other finger. Just keep cutting fingers off and you're like, no,
it needs a pulse. Alright. So we talked about the
(09:57):
friction ridges. Yeah, they're called f Just remember because they
buck up buckle under the pressure. The friction up against
the dermis that can take the pressure. Buckles. Um. But
the forms a specific pattern and this is what you know.
The arrangement shape and size and number of lines is
what they're looking for when they're identifying and comparing these things.
(10:18):
And there's three different patterns there can be. Uh, there's
loops begins on one side, curves up and around and
exits the other. Yeah, look at your fingers while we describe.
There are radio loops and owner loops, um radial slope
toward the thumb, owner towards the little finger, and intuitive
to tell which way that the slope is going. Oh yeah,
(10:39):
just yeah, because technically you could be like, well no,
I think it's so much way to turn your head.
The aforementioned whirls are circular or spiral in nature, and
arches slope up and then down like, and they're described
here as narrow mountains. Yeah, it just goes. I think
that summed it up. So those are the identifying marks
(11:01):
on your fingers, um that you can see the naked eye.
And then if you're in law enforcement, they're gonna be
also analyzing something called minutia, which you can't see with
the naked eye. No. And these are basically like further
characteristics of the loops and worlds and arches. So you
might you might have a spur, which is another um
like world that comes off of a larger whirl um.
(11:24):
Or there's an abrupt end to a ridge, or there's
bifurcation or islands. It's like a world within a world. Um.
There's deltas, which are like ridges that form like y patterns,
just a little stuff like that, and they all form
this classification system that the cops rely on when they
fingerprint you. And the the science, the forensic science of
(11:46):
fingerprinting is called deactyloscopy. That's right, like pterodactyl um. And
I guess there are probably some places still that do
it the old fashioned way UM and don't have digital
scanning finger methods. Montana hello, Montana, Um. They would do
it like you've seen it on countless TV shows and movies.
(12:08):
They would clean your hand off, dry it off with alcohol. Yeah,
they want to get all the sea bulm off, get
all the sum off, roll the fingertip um, and then
I usually say left or right, but I imagine you
could do either way to get the ink on the finger.
Make sure it's fully covered. Then you roll onto the
card from fingernail to fingernail, from one side to the other.
(12:32):
That is called a rolled fingerprint. Yeah. You do this
with all eight fingers and two thumbs and uh, then
you've got your set of rolled prints. Then they take
your hands and cover all your fingers with the ink
and then just have you press it down flat at
the bottom of this fingerprint card. And uh, those are
that's a set of flat prints which are used apparently
(12:53):
to um verify the uh um yeah, exactly to say
they have two sets basically, yeah. Um. If you live
in the modern world and you live in a large city,
you're probably gonna have digital scanners doing the same thing. Um.
It's an optical scanner that basically put your fingers on
(13:15):
there and it through magic converts that into digital data
patterns and then they have programs that map those points
and basically it's sort of like you see in the movies. Yeah,
and what's neat about the optical scanners. The picture that
it makes is the inverse. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense,
(13:36):
So you're uh to negative image, right. The the the
the worlds and everything had more light bounce off of them,
so they tend to be lighter. Um, whereas like the
valleys and everything in between, the friction ridges are darker.
And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say
it's more accurate than rolled prints. I might be wrong,
You're probably right from what I've read. Sure, Yeah, because
(13:59):
you know when someone's like you ever seen First Blood? No? Yeah,
you have stallone the Vampire Show? No, No, that's true Blood,
first Blood. The Rambo first printure. Remember when he was
being difficult when they were booking him and he wasn't
doing the fingerprinting right right, They couldn't get good prints
because Rambo wouldn't stand for it. No, he doesn't take
(14:21):
any crap, all right. There's two types of prints visible
prints that we talked of. Um, actually we didn't talk
about him there there if you actually leave an intention
in something, a visible print like dirt or clay or
something blood or something like that. Blood would be a
good example. It's visible. You can look and say there's
a fingerprint exactly. There's also latent prints, which we leave
(14:42):
everywhere all the time. Um. And those are the ones
that are just made with the sea bum coming out
of our fingers, the pores on our friction ridges, and
those are typically not necessarily naked to the the human eye.
Like if you look at like, yes, stainless steel, you'll
probably see some pressure clear class maybe right, But those
are technically latent prints. Um. They also can be um
(15:06):
invisible to the naked eye, and so they have to
be um dusted. Yeah, and they actually do dust with
a little brush. UM. I looked up the dusting powder
fingerprinting powder, and apparently most of it these days is proprietary,
so like you don't know exactly what's in it, really,
I just guess like carbon, who knows. Maybe I know
(15:27):
you should formulate your own Josh's fingerprinting caller, you know,
market it to some local harmfulks enforcement agencies. Yeah, I'll
sell it like snake oil or something like Uncle Peppi's
patented a one blue ribbon fingerprinting. Uh so they lift
the prints, um, these latent prints, and those are the
obviously the prints too that you see criminals and TV
(15:49):
shows and movies always trying to wipe off with a hanky, right,
very wisely, Yeah, I wonder if what the if that
really works? You want to get into that, do you know? Yes,
it should Okay, it should work from what I understand.
I read this one paper that was basically like, we
should not be using fingerprints in court any longer. That
(16:13):
first of all, we have DNA now, and DNA is objective.
It's like this protein sequence is the same as this
protein sequence. Right with fingerprinting is subjective, even though there's
an extensive classification system, it's I think that this print
matches up to this print. There's not. It's not quantitative,
(16:34):
or if it is, it's not enough quantitative enough. Also,
there's so much faith placed by the public in fingerprint
analysis that fingerprinting people who do this work frequently are
matching stuff like they're they're taking a great role print
(16:55):
and comparing it to like just the worst smudge print
on the planet, where you know, you can be like,
I don't get that because I'm not a dactyloscopist. But
I'm sure that somebody who who is that could could
figure this out. And supposedly that's a lot of faith
that we're placing into people, and that now that DNA
evidence is becoming more and more UM available and prevalent
(17:16):
and widespread, it's starting to show like um fingerprinting is
actually probably put a lot of innocent people behind bars,
and we really shouldn't rely on it anymore because even
even if you have a great print that you took
a latent print, right yeah, and there are plenty like
they're not shysters or frauds or crooks because even within
(17:38):
their profession, a lot of them are like there's a
lot of recklessness going on here. Um that you're never
going to have a really great latent print. It's never
gonna be good, and so you're working from a deficit
every time, and you're also comparing it to a role print,
and a roll print is also not the same as
(17:59):
another rolled print made right after. Like you can take
somebody's finger and roll it from fingernails, fingernail, pick it up,
put it on the next little box, roll the same
finger from fingernail, the fingernail and you're going to have
basically two different prints. So that's in the olden days
before they had the digital scanning though, right, But those
are still a lot of the ones on file imagine. Yes,
And I feel like we're probably still dealing with the
(18:22):
same deficits. The paper I read was from like two
thousand five or seven, so it's not like it was
old and they're they're saying like this is still going
on with the advent of digital scanning. Plus, I think
you know as well as I do, when you're a
court and the attorney yells at the top of his
lungs his fingerprints were found all over the murder scene,
your your toast, well, yeah, and I think that a
lot of perpetrators to think that, like if they have
(18:46):
your prints but you're dead, that's it, and like they
have you dead to rights, so you might as well confess.
And I'm sure it's a great tool for confessing. Yeah.
I wonder if d n A thwarts I wonder if
anything like that actually thwarts people from committing crimes. You know,
I wonder if anyone ever stops and goes, boy, now
a d n A. I would think you can just
wipe down a crime scene, Like if I drop a
hair on the carpet, then I could be, you know, nabbed.
(19:09):
Sure I would think that's a pretty good deterrent. Yeah,
I just don't know in the criminal mind how how
that operates. I'm sure it makes them operate a lot
less sloppy than I used to. You know, that's a
good point. All right, Let's talk a little bit about
the history, because it's pretty interesting. I think, um that
in ancient Babylon they actually uh press fingertips and clay
(19:29):
to for some business transactions. Pretty advanced. I mean, thousands
of years ago people already understood like if fingertips are unique,
and of course the Chinese we're always ahead of the
game on everything. It seemed like they actually used ink
on paper for business transactions and help identify their kids,
like my dad. Yeah, I thought it was kind of weird, though,
(19:49):
can you un identify your child? Oh well, if they
grow up, if they're kidnapped and take into another village,
I guess, so they grow up in return to claim
of birthright. Yeah, that's a good point. Sure. Um, it
wasn't until they didn't use them for identifying criminals until
the nineteenth century and there's a series of events that's
(20:10):
sort of just not necessarily connected, happened one after the
other to sort of advance it at the same time.
The first eight was a guy named Sir William Herschel,
and Englishman who was chief magistrate of the Hoogli District
in India, and he started recording fingerprints when signing documents.
(20:32):
So that's kind of the first thing, right. Then you
mentioned Henry Faulds. He came around next, Scottish doctor. Yeah,
he was, Um, I guess he got into Japanese pottery
and noticed like the fingerprints left behind by the artists,
and um, he started getting into fingerprinting. So he wanted
to create a classification system and said, I'm not gonna
do it myself. I'm cousins to Charles Darwin all this
(20:54):
asked him to do it. He's pretty good at that,
and Darwin said, I'm kind of busy, but I have
another cousin. His name is Sir Francis Galton, and he's
going to be into this. Galton here's a eugenicist. I
wonder if Darwin was like, oh god, it's you know,
another classification Henry again, I almos pass him off. The cousin,
(21:16):
cousin Frank, Yeah, be cousin Frank. So, like you said,
he was augenicist, um and he got I feel like
we talked about him before he pops up here there,
just pretty big in um in this era. Yeah, he
was the first dude to really start kind of collecting
biometric information on people, um, not just fingerprints, all kinds
(21:37):
of stuff. And being a eugenicist, he decided that there
was a perfect human and we should selectively breed ourselves.
That's right. Yeah, we're not promoting his work by the way. Um,
although in two he wrote a book called Fingerprints and
he outlined his systems, first time it had ever been done,
and it was based on the system we know today
(21:59):
archist loops and roles. Uh. And then in France, the
guy named Alfonse Bertillon. Now he's made maybe four appearances
in our podcast before I knew I knew that name. Um,
he was at the same time using his own system
called bert Bertiel nage and uh, anthropometry is basically what
(22:20):
he was doing. Yeah, because remember he was like working
in the Paris police department and like he saw the
same criminals come and go, but they use aliases. So
he devised the system of like measuring their face and
head in their tears and all that. Definitely sketches. He
was definitely that one. Yeah, definitely UM. And he one
of them also was fingerprinting too, but his his system
(22:40):
was extremely exhaustive, even though it was adopted by the
London police. I believe it was just all it was
really time consuming, sure, but he was advancing the art,
like eight of them at once. Uh. And then about
the same time in Argentina, UM, a police officer named
Juan Uh. You wanna try that a it sounds good,
(23:01):
doesn't sound Argentinian, but Umo, he actually used fingerprinting. This
is a two in a case to convict a mother
who had killed her two kids, when in fact she
was saying it was her her boyfriend. He actually matched
fingerprints and she confessed and like he had her first
case right, there were actually being used in uh to
(23:24):
convict a criminal. Yeah, that was the first time it
ever happened. Two and Buenos Aires, UM, I think what
The following year eree a guy named Sir Edward Henry.
He was the commissioner of the police department. He became
interested in using fingerprinting to fight crimes. UM. And he
came up with a classification system that further extended Galton's UM.
(23:50):
So he came up with, I believe the minutia and UM,
I guess the kind of the comparable points that we
rely on still today. It's called the henrylassification system. And
when you see on tv UM, you know, a fingerprint
fed into a computer and like it flashes through for
some reason all of the fingerprints that it's matching them
(24:12):
against that is using the Henry classification system that this
guy created in that's pretty awesome. Uh. In nineteen o one,
Scotland Yard established the Fingerprint Bureau, it's first one, and
then they used them as evidence the following year for
the first time, and then the year after that in
New York they started using it in state prisons. And
then the FBI said it's not a bad idea, let's
(24:33):
get on board exactly, So everybody's getting on board. The
Henry system like really allowed a system of classification that
could be used anywhere UM to be devised, and it
was adopted. The problem was it was extremely time consuming too. Yeah,
you're matching paper to paper basically, and you're doing it
(24:54):
with a magnifying glass. Yeah, that the computer systems that
we see today on TV, those are going through you know, millions, say, um,
possible matches. Even if you had like a thousand, how
many detectives would it take to just look through a
set of prints, your control prints and then you know,
(25:14):
another print to find a killer or something like that
from a latent print. Yeah, they call it minutia for
a reason. Exactly. Imagine those guys went kind of nuts, um,
And that's if they even had a fingerprint on file,
like they were counting on someone having because at the time,
you know, it was only criminals had figger prints. Well,
(25:35):
they probably were like, this looks like a man's thumb print.
Let's go through all the thumb prints of the men
we have on file and see if we can catch somebody. Thummy,
it was much better if like you could catch a suspect,
print them and then compare it. But that's you know,
not necessarily what they were doing. Luckily, we created computers
to be our mindless slaves at this kind of stuff,
(25:57):
and starting around the seventies, Yeah, and Japan was their
national police agency, was the first one to use this
kind of automation. In the nineteen eighties and they created
the Automated Fingerprint Identification systems APISTS. Its slogan was warm,
fuzzy happiness. That's what it says in quotes in their name,
the Automated Fingerprinting Concern. Uh so they used it in
(26:22):
the US UM to too great effect. Although the problem
was it wasn't integrated, Like you know, they didn't share
information between agencies or between districts of of law enforcement.
So you're kind of just stuck with whoever you had
on file, right like, even though it was computerized. A yeah, yeah,
a particular police department, maybe even a statewide police department
(26:45):
if you're luck, could buy APHIST an apist system. Yeah,
but like that was your APHIST system. Fortunately, the FBI said, hey,
there's this awesome thing called the Internet. Yeah I should
I say, fortunately if you're a criminal, not necessarily fortunately,
or you're in the privacy and all that. Um. But they,
the FBI and I think UM created the Integrated APHIS UM,
(27:06):
which basically plugged all of these databases together and created
one huge database that the FBI maintains screwed up. Their
acronym though, i aphis Yeah it's terrible. UM. So yeah,
now there's one in six Americans who has their fingerprints
on file and i aphis yea, and I think they
(27:27):
say it takes a about thirty minutes as little as
thirty minutes to scan against everyone in the entire country
at this point, including mud shots, criminal histories, seven million
people on record. That's not bad, including you, my friend. Yeah,
you better keep that hanky on you at all times.
Wiped down my print, your prints. I could also just
(27:49):
stay on the straight and narrow. Oh yeah, that's true.
I'll like you wipe my prints down? Is to be sure.
Should we talk a little bit about other biometrics, even
though we've covered some of the stuff. If you want
I scans, they're really expensive there. Um, the retinas and
the iris are also unique, but um, they're just super expensive.
So the only place you're going to see those are
(28:10):
like high security, like expensive facilities. Well, it depends. The
retina scan is extremely detailed and tough. The iris scan
supposedly is much quicker, and you're more likely to find those.
Um it's cheaper to yeah, a little more prevalently, but
still you're not gonna find that at your average parties. Um,
(28:32):
what about Carl Jr? Though? Okay, ear scans. Apparently ears
are unique in size and shape instructor as well. I
think they used this too for scanning crowds as well.
Like part official recognition is scan ears? Interesting? Yeah, slapdash
scary boys. Fingerprints. Um, there's an audio lab the FBI
(28:55):
operates in Quantico, Virginia. UM, and when there are messages
from supposed known terrorists, they run it through their program
and it does pretty good job. It's not like a fingerprint,
but they can do a pretty good job with vocal analysis.
At this point, you could also use this if you're,
like say, um, contacting your bank in Geneva by phone.
(29:16):
Your bank may use some sort of voice print analysis
to say, okay, you're you single favorite song. I wonder
if they do what they do, have you say yeah
or do? I'm sure it's just your name, but it'd
be funny if like they had you sing you give
love a bad name all right by chuck? Uh? And
(29:38):
then d N A of course. Um. There was just
a ruling last week in the Supreme Court. They ruled
five to four that DNA swabs can now be taken
at the time of arrest for serious crimes. Um. Is
that right? Yeah? So for serious crimes. I thought the
whole the whole row over the this was that it
was like like it can just take him from anybody. Well,
(30:02):
it's like it's just for serious crimes. The whole row
is the fact that it's a police officer doing it
and not a like you're not at the police station
with a trained you know, d n A analysis analyst
man and Allen nice what is wrong with me today? Yea.
(30:24):
In the ruling they said that they've essentially found that
it's the same thing as fingerprinting, So now cops are
gonna have a little swab mouth swab kits in their cars.
And uh, it was applied before ruling. It was close.
And it's some people you know are up in arms
about it, saying it's civil rights, uh infringement, and yeah,
the end of privacy is what we're witnessing. Yeah, yeah,
(30:48):
oh yeah. It's sad to see nobody, nobody's doing anything
about it that that n s a whistleblower gave up
his life basically, and everybody it's like, wow, I guess
I always suspect that was going on anyway, right, you know,
so anyway, um fingerprints, yes, you got anything else? I
(31:10):
got nothing else. All right, Well, if you want to
learn more about fingerprints, you can type that word into
the search part how stuffworks dot com. And since I
said search part, that means it's time for message break. Yeah,
I know it's time for listening mail Josh, I'm gonna
(31:31):
call this. UH. Let's let's help this uh young lady
raise some money for cancer. We don't do this lot.
We get a lot of requests and we can't do
them all. We wish we could. But Whitney spoke to me.
She's been listening for years. She's a big fan. She
has started as an undergrad and now she is wrapping
up her second year in law school at the Ohio
State University. Couple of guys, Yeah, um, I know you
(31:55):
like to hear about awesome charities. I wanted to share
this unique one here in Columbus, Ohio. UH pellots Onya
is a bike ride that raises money for life saving
cancer research. Goes raised by writers goes to cancer research
at the James Cancer Center at Ohio State. UM. It
especial to me because my grandmother got cancer treatment at
the James when she did not have health insurance, and
(32:16):
she was proud that they could use her rare case
to potentially help find a cure for others. Um Nancy
passed away in two thousand eleven. She was fighting her cancer.
In the course of a single day though the age
of sixty five, she began having severe dementia like symptoms.
We are not sure why. Symptoms left her unable to
mentally compete with the cancer and without her willpower and
(32:39):
understanding um that she had an extremely rare terminal cancel
cancer to battle, her health went downhill quickly. Still, her
inter dignity shine through, even with a drastic drop in
body weight and repeated trips to the e R. So
in memory of her grandmother, she is writing for charity.
So she's raised two d and fifteen dollars right now.
(33:00):
I think we should pump that up a little bit
in our listeners. So I created a little tiny rol
of her page um H T T P colon slash
slash tiny rol dot com slash m r m k
X six V. So that's m r m k x
six v after tiny orl dot com and that is
(33:22):
Whitney Bramlin's bike ride page. It goes down August tent,
I believe, and that'd be cool if we did race
all extra dough for her. Yeah, everybody gets to there.
That's pretty good. So and you know, it's one of
those things where you can get like five dollars if
you want to, dude to skip that latte today, I say,
and donate to Whitney's calls. Yeah, way to go Chuck.
(33:44):
Wait you go, Whitney, Way to go Whitney, And way
to go you for donating. We're proud of you already
in advance, agreed. Uh, if you want to let us
know about a charitable organization you care about, We're always
down with that. We'll try to let everybody know about it.
In turn. Um, you can tweet to us at s
Y s G podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, Slash you Should Know. You can send us
(34:05):
an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
you can join us at our home on the web.
That's Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how Stuff
works dot com. This episode of Stuff you Should Know
(34:29):
is brought to you by YouTube geek Week. Tune end,
define your channels at YouTube dot com. Slash Geek Week
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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