United States
Automated Firearms Identification has its roots in the United States, the country with the highest per capita firearms ownership. In 1993, the Federal Bureau of Investigation commissioned Mnemonics Systems Inc. to develop Drugfire, which enabled law enforcement agencies to capture images of cartridge casings into computers, and automate the process of comparing a suspect cartridge against the database. Drugfire was later upgraded to handle bullet imaging as well.
Also in 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms established its own automated ballistics identification system. Instead of having a custom-made system like the FBI however, ATF opted to build their network on a platform developed by Forensic Technology WAI Inc., a private Canadian company. At the time, the FTI platform was named Bulletproof, and imaged only bullets. It was later upgraded to handle cartridge casings as well, and was then subsequently renamed as the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS).
From 1993 to 1998, the United States had two automated ballistics identification systems in place: Drugfire, which was under the FBI, and IBIS, under the ATF. Although there were attempts to interconnect the two systems under the National Integrated Ballistic Identification Network (NIBIN), the FBI and ATF finally decided in 1999 to phase out Drugfire, and standardize NIBIN on the IBIS platform. This decision was arrived at after a thorough joint FBI-ATF evaluation revealed the superiority of IBIS over the other system.
The adoption of IBIS as the NIBIN standard propelled Forensic Technology as the world’s biggest manufacturer of automated ballistic identification systems. As of May, 2007 there are more than 500 IBIS systems installed in more than 35 countries worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Automated Firearms Identification
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn’t he an archetype? Pioneers, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can’t do with him. What’s wrong with him then? Or what’s wrong with us?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)