Mark Twain was the first to talk about using fingerprinting in criminal cases. His 'Life on the Mississippi', published in 1883, contains a collection of essays and short stories. One such story concerns a man who had attempted to catch the killers of his wife and child by using fingerprint evidence. Mark Twain was evidently greatly interested in the subject. He had made a study of finger and hand marks. Fingerprinting wasn't commonly used to identify criminals in the U.S. until around 1903.
posted by flipyourwig on Dec 23, 2008 - 16 comments

Fingerprinting school kids for lunch. Several schools in California will require students to scan their fingerprints before getting their school lunch to help speed up cafeteria lines. Don't worry about it, it's already being done in Georgia while Florida has a similar system which also lets parents check to see what their kids bought for lunch. Arizona doesn't do fingerprints, it just has the kids enter a number for their meals. New Jersey has Iris Scanning.

Hopefully all of this information was gained through parental consent.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Nov 5, 2006 - 38 comments

Cash, credit, or fingerprint? Biometrics are hot. Since we've already tired of our RFID credit cards, Wal-Mart and Costco are exploring fingerprint scanners as a means of payment in their stores. Pay by Touch, which has already installed its technology in various Cub Foods, bigg's, Piggly Wiggly, and Farm Fresh stores, is proud to change the way we all say "I am me". But didn't we already decide that sometimes fingerprints say "I am someone else"? [via]
posted by youarenothere on Jan 25, 2006 - 18 comments

Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a Registered Traveler, and fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed here].
posted by digaman on Jan 25, 2006 - 52 comments

Large scale ballistic fingerprinting of guns doubtful. The California Attorney General's Office has said that large scale ballistic fingerprinting of all weapons is not yet practical. Ballistic fingerprinting spawned much discussion earlier on MeFi. I couldn't find the complete report online yet.
posted by stevefromsparks on Jan 29, 2003 - 5 comments

Bush skeptical of ballistic fingerprinting. This article talks about Bush's (and the NRA's) reluctance to set up a national ballistic fingerprinting system to trace bullets back to the guns which fired them. Some feel this technology could be helpful in finding the DC sniper. Apparently, legislation to set up this system has been in the works for about 2 years, but this is the first I've heard of it. Any MeFi people know more about this?
posted by botono9 on Oct 16, 2002 - 92 comments

If Pascal Smet has his way you will be fingerprinted and registered in a world wide database of every human alive. [Via DR]
posted by HoldenCaulfield on Dec 17, 2001 - 13 comments

Napster to Use "Fingerprinting" Technology to help it filter out copyrighted songs. "There are many technological challenges.'' That's putting it lightly. How badly would this slow down their system if they could even get it to work?
posted by Outlawyr on Apr 21, 2001 - 10 comments