Believe it or not, there's an AFIS-like competitor in India . . . . .
According to the February 21, 1998, Asia Intelligence Wire, the Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC) of Hyderabad, India, has spent about 10 years and Rs. 6 crores (yeah, this currency translation's going to take some research) in developing a fourth-generation Fingerprint Analysis and Criminal Tracing System (FACTS).
According to the published report, "FACTS makes use of the latest advances in image processing, computational geometry and pattern recognition to trace fingerprints . . . . The process of matching fingerprints, which could take days, weeks or even months when done manually can be carried out by FACTS in one to two hours. In certain cases it can be done even in a matter of minutes. . . . Among the highlights of FACTS is that it . . . . also provides a single algorithm for a chance print taken from the scene of crime spots and ten print matching." According to The Hindu of March 7, 1998, the system will come up with the best three to four matches on file, and then have a fingerprint expert make the final call. So it doesn't seem quite as sophisticated as what we see in US technology.
But maybe it has a home court advantage, because the February 21 report noted it had made a sale to the Mauritius police force (at a price of 2 crores for the software), and the Tamil Nadu police (at a package price of 1.83 crores), and the March 7 report says CMC expects to sell the system to Nepal (where's IDX in Nepal? Lost in the Himalayas?), and "has also applied to the international bid floated by Interpol."
David |
