Page 62 - Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS)

HISTOR Y OF AUTOMATED FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS 47

The standard was approved by ballot and forwarded to ANSI for registration.
The official title is ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993 American National Standard for Infor-
mation Systems—Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint Information; it is uni-
formly referred to simply as the ANSI/NIST standard in the AFIS community.
It has been updated twice since then, again through a series of workshops
hosted by Mike McCabe and NIST. The first change was in 1997 with the addi-
tion of Type 10 records for facial images and images of scars, marks, and tattoos.
Then in 2000, it was updated to add variable density records for finger, latent,
and palm images as well as a test record (Type 16). The current title is
ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2000 American National Standard for Information Systems—Data
Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Scar Mark & Tattoo (SMT)
Information.

2.7.2 FBI AND OTHER IMPLEMENTATIONS OF THE ANSI STANDARD

After the ANSI/NIST standard was approved, the FBI published the Electronic
Fingerprint Transmission Specification (EFTS). The EFTS specified which
Transaction Types (TOTs), record types, and data fields the FBI would accept
and which data fields were mandatory or optional. The most significant deci-
sion made when preparing the EFTS was that the FBI would only accept Type
4 fingerprint (high-resolution, gray-scale) images. While the workshops had
supported four image types, only the Type 4 has been used since the 1994 intro-
duction of the EFTS. The other image types are still in the standard but are
not used in any major AFIS system or in tenprint livescan systems.
By 18 March 1994, the UK Home Office Police Department, Police Systems
Research and Development Group published their interpretation of the
ANSI/NIST, entitled ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993 Data Format for the Interchange of
Fingerprint Information, United Kingdom Implementation. The Royal Canadian
Mounted Police published their version, The National Police Service NIST Inter-
face Control Document, known as the NPS-NIST-ICD.
In May of 1995, Interpol held a conference in Lyon, France to discuss a stan-
dard for the interchange of fingerprints around the world. The different size
forms and the different data fields in use included many different languages,
which challenged them in finding a common solution. The U.S., Canadian, and
UK representatives, including Peter Higgins, recommended moving to the
exchange of virtual fingerprint records, as having digital images of the finger-
prints would permit different countries to print them on different forms and
in different locations on paper forms. With limited infrastructure and limited
computerization of the processes, however, Interpol worked on a paper inter-
change standard.