RJT>VH> That's exactly right -- "60 Minutes" turned into an
informercial
RJT>VH> for this machine.  And they gave us the impression that it does a
RJT>VH> lot more than it really does.

RJT>Of course.

RJT>Hey,  let's go invent something,  sell it like that with an issue involved
RJT>has a lot of emotional import to bunches of people (that'll get a politicia
RJT>attention quick),  and sell it to the guvamint.  Even if it doesn't work,
RJT>doesn't matter.  The bureaucracy that results will never go away,  but it'l
RJT>keep the folks that get into it out of trouble in other,  more important ar
RJT> and we'll all make a lotta money.

You want to invest in my psyonic sweat detector? :-)

RJT>VH> They never did answer the basic question -- how long would it take
RJT>VH> on average to match up a fired case or bullet?

RJT>That's because there is no answer to that.  They did point out that the rou
RJT>matching was about the best of what the system could do,  and that final
RJT>matching would still have to be done by people.

And "rough matching" is basically selecting all the 9mms from the data
base when the suspect case is a 9mm. :-)

RJT>Then there's the fact that there's what,  tens of millions of guns out ther
RJT>already that haven't been subjected to the process?

And I LOVED the argument that, although they have to admit you can
change the "ballistic fingerprint" of a gun in a minute or less
"Criminals wouldn't do THAT." :-)

RJT>I gotta hand it to them for snagging the term
"fingerprint" for this nonsen
RJT>The general public _believes_ that no two people have the same prints.  The
RJT>only people who would be in a position to know for sure would be somebody l
RJT>the FBI,  and they ain't talkin' about it.  But their choice of this term w
RJT>move _designed_ to put the implication into people's heads that the same th
RJT>would hold true in this case -- that no two of them would be the same, and
RJT>the technique would therefore be a sure-fire way to identify
"the bad guys"

RJT>Yeah,  right.

Oddly enough, "60 Minutes" did a piece on fingerprints just a week
before this crap aired -- and pointed out that there has never been a
scientific study of fingerprints, there is no standard for matching
fingerprints, and most fingerprint "technicians" are not certified.
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