Fingerprint test reveals if owner has touched drugs, explosives, and poisons
In today's edition of the journal Science, R. Graham Cooks, a professor of chemistry at Purdue University, describes a mass spectrometry technique that to test fingerprints to learn what the person has been touching, including drugs, explosives, and poisons.
Because the spatial resolution is on the order of the width of a human hair, the Desi technique did not just detect the presence of, for instance, cocaine on the surface, but literally showed a pattern of cocaine in the shape of the fingerprint, leaving no doubt who had left the cocaine behind.Fingerprint test tells much more than identity (IHT)
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The article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5890/805
This does not bode well.
So, let's say someone steals something from my house, and while the cops are there they lift a bunch of fingerprints trying to find the thief. Well, obviously most of the fingerprints will be mine. What if I had touched drugs for whatever reason (a friend tosses me a bag and I say no thanks and toss it back. yeah, we'll go with that). Do they get to arrest me because they were in my house doing a legal search?
Heard somewhere that every 20USD bill has traces of drugs. Will touching one of these bills be enough to leave traces in a fingerprint sample at an airport screening?
buy shares in disposable glove company stock
its nothing to worry about. the technique they mention is mass spectrometry.. this technique is capable of determining the elementary contents and concentrations of materials in a lab. This process is extremely expensive and requires a giant amount of equipment and a VERY well maintained environment (read as, in a vacuum)... all these things make it impossible to implement outside a very well funded lab.. totally worthless article makes it sound like its coming to the street tomorrow.. ha!
from the article
"The equipment to perform such tests is already commercially available, although expensive. Smaller, cheaper, portable versions are probably only a couple of years away."
Oh yeah, THAT technology will NEVER be abused in order to jail people the regime doesn't like.
Nice! Bullet Lead Analysis 2.0!
#6 pfffft, all that is needed is for single politicion to *believe* that it is possible. We'll be throwing all sorts of worthless resources against this in 3...2...
Yea i guess being outlandishly expensive is even more detrimental once the greedheads start salivating over the idea :/
I guess the only saving grace is once it becomes commonplace we can finally show how Heir Bush's cell phone has traces of cocaine on it... funny, that...
As long as it can't tell if I've been touching myself.
A few years back when this was news everyone believed that it would be the next step in random drug tests.
Doesn't seem to have caught on....yet.
At the Nice, France airport they swabbed my carry-on to test for explosives residue, took all of a few seconds and I was on my way.
No baggage search, no shoe removal.
And no chance for TSA employees to steal or plant explosive devices...seemed much more efficient.
Wouldn't this just prove that you came in contact with one of those substances, not who left it as described in the quote?
The concept of proving witting contact? That alone makes for some dubious logic in using this for entrapment. Then there's a chain of connection between any quantity of contraband and the alleged "guilty fingerprint" As in the simple- yes suspect X has dope in fingerprint. We even go a step further and claim spectral match for adulterants that are in contraband. ALL that does is prove our suspect touched something that was contaminated by the contraband. Witting possession
is still just so not there.
Look at the "Airport stop" scenario. Suspect flunks dope print- no dope found on suspect BUT there was a package found by sniffer dog in the same time frame. It was in a washroom on the plane. The suspect even used the washroom. Even left a fingerprint on the flush lever of the toilet.
I still have trouble with it proving guilt.
Yes dope was found in an aircraft's trash can. Absent finding suspect's fingerprint ON dope you have no connection to the dope and a reasonable presumption of innocent contamination from casual surface contact. Think door latch etc. Thus dope in/on a finger print NOT on the contraband itself is not itself to me at least- proof the suspect handled the dope. suspicion yes. Proof NO.
As FoetusNail said cash is totally contaminated with cocaine. I suppose that is one way to get everyone to use credit cards.
never chopped rails, Sally?
There is also the obvious method to obfuscate this technique-- sprinkle traces of drugs or explosives on the subway, then everyone will have traces on them.
Remind me to not ever ever ever use the bag I have my muzzle loading supplies in as a carry on bag.
I'm guessing that would make the swab they use run down the concourse and hide.
"I still have trouble with it proving guilt."
We stopped worrying about proving guilt years ago. It will be plenty enough to call you a drug dealer and seize all your stuff without so much as charging you with anything at all.
charging? Suspected "terrorists" can now go straight to the waterboard legally.
RE: Swabbing for explosive residue at aerodromes.
The residue isn't specifically what they are looking for (they want the whole bomb) but it's just one way of eliminating all those with no residue from invasive unnecessary searches.
Vetting the haves from the have nots.
But you have to ask, does that 5 year old, who plays with cap guns, really need a cavity search?
need a list of common, household substances that will yield false positives.
Does this mean I should request a warrant for taking my fingerprints?
time to cut off my fingers
any true patriot will not object to being sent to gulags in error, their love of the Fatherland comes before selfish considerations.
Your government regrets you have but one life to lay down for your country.
Re: #21
"We stopped worrying about proving guilt years ago. It will be plenty enough to call you a drug dealer and seize all your stuff without so much as charging you with anything at all."
Sadly it's no longer just drugs.
Is it too much to ask that intelligent people stop designing things that can, and probably will, seriously infringe on my liberties?
Please?
when i blogged about this thursday
http://vark.blogspot.com/2008/08/mini-mass-spectrometer-from-small.html [blogspot.com]
i put in a link to the company that makes the gadget (oops, company makes the spray, not the spectrometers.)
http://www.prosolia.com/ [prosolia.com]
The technology has numerous benign applications, like sniffing out cancer. It's primarily a medical and scientific process, not a fingerprints-only thingy.
This is a great comment. Try removing the us and them angle, which is why intelligent people justify doing what they do. Because we never truly understand the implications of our work, unintended consequences, etc. and we don't see us as all of us, we build the tools of our oppression. This is the crux of oppression. How many people end up in the camp they helped design or build?
Is it too much to ask that we stop designing things that can, and probably will, seriously infringe on our liberties?
other smart people will design the work-around
Just hope you never touch anything that somebody previously used to touch cocain. You know, like money.
@32
suggest you read Bronowski's The Ascent of Man with special reference to the efforts of Slizard to stop the bombing of Hiroshima
It's not the residue of drugs or explosives I fear; it's the unusual chemical sprinkled in advance at political gatherings.
Glad to see someone else recommending The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski.
I also wanted to add:
Which is the whole point of James Burke's Connections.James Burke!
I remember bits of the series, and will also order Bronkowski's book. You all are getting expensive. I too very much enjoyed Connections.
We live or die at the crossroads of ignorance and hubris. Ignorance is not a pejorative, but a perpetual state of being. We exacerbate the problem when we make a conscious decision to remain ignorant. If we cannot believe, if only for a moment, that everything we know is wrong, then soon we will believe anything and know nothing of our beliefs. Because of a crippling faith in our corrupted knowledge, we deny ourselves the cognitive tools needed to understand the nature of ignorance. As we are always ignorant of the true consequences of our actions, innocent or not, the best we can do is cherish curiosity, choose knowledge, decide empathetically, and act compassionately. Absent curiosity, knowledge, empathy, and compassion, and with hubris intelligent people create Auschwitz-Birchenau.
Bronowski's comments at Auschwitz
This reminds me of the case of the Birmingham Six, later proved to have been falsely accused and framed up by English police. Forensic tests on the hands of some of the men appeared to show that they had handled explosives. It was subsequently proved that similar results could be found if someone had handled cigarettes, furniture lacquer or playing cards. Nevertheless, they were handed over to the West Midlands serious crimes squad and within a few days almost all had signed confessions to the bombings that were later shown to have been beaten out of them. They then spent 16 years of their lives in jail for being Irish, and in the wrong place in an English city.
So if my neighbor has been smoking something that doesn't smell like tobacco, I touch the handle of the same apartment door he does, and then I go to the airport -- am I going to be tagged by the system as a druggie?