ABSTRACT
The FBI keeps a fingerprint database in West Virginia, which contains approximately 50 million sets of prints. When the U.S. military recently rounded up suspected terrorists in Iraq, they took their fingerprints and sent them to the FBI through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Within just two hours, they could find out if any of the detainees had criminal histories in the United States-forty-four of them had. Local authorities also regularly use the database.
