Lockheed Martin announces NGI Increment 3 deployment, includes National Palm Print System

Increment 3 of the FBI’s Next Generation Identification was recently deployed by a Lockheed Martin-led team, and the group says this new increment provides significant improvement in latent fingerprint search accuracy as well as a new nationwide palm print identification system to help solve cold cases.

The improvements are the largest so far in a series of phased upgrades to the FBI’s biometric identification services, and incorporate powerful matching algorithms developed by Morpho and supplied by its U.S subsidiary, MorphoTrak.

According to the company, the new National Palm Print System contains latent palm prints that will be searchable on a nationwide basis for the first time.

“The quantum leap in capabilities provided by Increment 3 and the NGI initiative overall are the result of the technology expertise and dedication of all the Lockheed Martin team members in combination with the vision and leadership of CJIS,” Stephanie C. Hill , president, Information Systems and Global Solutions-Civil, at Lockheed Martin said. “We have supported the mission of the U.S. Department of Justice for nearly 40 years, and are committed to maximizing technology to help the FBI and other law enforcement agencies make the nation’s streets safer.”

NGI Increment 3 also includes improvements that are extending the breadth of searches. Records are managed more efficiently using the case management capabilities of a MorphoTrak product, which when combined with Lockheed Martin-developed software and Morpho search algorithms, allows for the processing of all hand friction ridge areas and prints on file from each arrest cycle. This enables law enforcement agencies to conduct searches with greater speed and convenience.

Reported previously, Public interest research group, The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI to obtain documents about the agency’s Next Generation Identification database.

A recent Biometric Research Note suggests that the U.S. Government is a major driver for biometrics and spends at least US$450 million per annum on pure scientific biometric research.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  FBI  |  Lockheed Martin  |  NGI  |  Palm