Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: A new FBI program is improving the way the Bureau and its law enforcement partners use biometrics to catch criminals and prevent attacks.

I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau and this is FBI, This Week.

David Cuthbertson, the assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services, speaks on the Next Generation Identification program, or NGI.

David Cuthbertson: Next Generation Identification is a rebuild of the FBI’s old fingerprint matching system. The former system was used to link criminal histories to fingerprints and to find crime scene fingerprint matches.

Halpern: NGI goes several steps further by expanding the FBI’s ability to meet its criminal justice and national security missions through fingerprints and other biometrics like palm prints and iris scans. Only authorized agencies have access to NGI and use it solely for law enforcement and permitted background check purposes.

Cuthbertson: The FBI has always had a long-standing concern for the privacy and civil liberties of all citizens.

Halpern: NGI is on schedule and on budget. For more information visit www.fbi.gov.