Finger print matching doesn’t really work well its all just a guess with no universal criteria on how close a smudge has to be to your fingerprint to be used
It can be used more empirically. The more matching points, the less likely a given match is down to random luck. A smudge will have relatively few useful points, and so far less reliability.
The big problem is you can either use fingerprints to identify someone to a scene, or to search for a match in a database. 1 in a million sounds impressive to a jury, and is in a 1 to 1 test. Compare it to a database of 10 million, and you will expect to get 10 matches by random chance alone.
Finger print matching doesn’t really work well its all just a guess with no universal criteria on how close a smudge has to be to your fingerprint to be used
There’s also no evidence to suggest that fingerprints are truly unique at all.
It can be used more empirically. The more matching points, the less likely a given match is down to random luck. A smudge will have relatively few useful points, and so far less reliability.
The big problem is you can either use fingerprints to identify someone to a scene, or to search for a match in a database. 1 in a million sounds impressive to a jury, and is in a 1 to 1 test. Compare it to a database of 10 million, and you will expect to get 10 matches by random chance alone.