New Fingerprinting Machines

[Thorin]

I coach kids' sports.  To do so, I have to get a Criminal Records Check, including Vulnerable Sector Check.  You used to get these based on your name and birthdate - if no record was found matching both your name and birthdate then you got a clean check, if there was a hit you'd have to get fingerprinted and the fingerprints would be compared to the records found.  Then two or three years ago the RCMP switched to only matching on your birthdate.  Sure enough, last year someone with the same birthday as me got a criminal record, so I had to go in for fingerprinting - dab the fingers on the inkpad, put the fingers on paper, then send the paper in to be analyzed and compared.

I went in for another CRC this year and saw they had this cool new machine.  Instead of ink, you just put your finger on a glass scanner plate (actually, first all fingers together then all fingers separately).  Once it's collected all the fingerprints, it sends them off electronically to an RCMP system (probably located in southern Ontario) and runs a comparison right away.  I'm guessing the comparison is only to fingerprints from people who match on my birthdate, because it only took four minutes from submitting the prints to getting a Confirmed Negative result.  The whole process took about fifteen minutes, which last year took three and a half months.  That's a decent improvement in wait times!

[Mr. Analog]

To be honest with the changes in imaging technology since... the 19th century... you'd think something like this would have been around for a while already.

Still pretty cool!

[Melbosa]

Yeah I remember having to go through this when I worked at the Tax centre sorting mail turning tax return season.  Same process of background checks.  Glad the process is shorter now... and would love to see one of those machines