Wednesday, July 02, 2008 NBI records storage ‘limited’
THE task of identifying casualties in the sinking of mv Princess of the Stars has highlighted a limitation in the National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) records keeping.
Lawyer Ernesto Maca-bare, head agent and NBI 7 executive officer, admitted that the agency does not have a database that systematically files the clearance
applications people submit.
What their system does, he said, is record and file the clearances that they issue. The database server is in Manila and regional agencies can access the central server.
Clearance
But the fingerprints of applicants are not reflected in the clearance.
The fingerprints only form part of the application that, while also kept, are not digitally recorded and uploaded into a server.
“We have to manually search (to find each application). It would be nice if we had something similar to the IAFIS,” he said, referring to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The IAFIS provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent searching capability, electronic image storage, and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses, to any American law enforcement agency 24 hours a day.
Match
A fingerprint specimen is merely scanned and uploaded unto the server and the computer automatically searches for a matching print, giving out pertinent information as soon as a match is found.
Since the Princess of the Stars tragedy struck, people have been going to the NBI regional office to get the fingerprint records of loved ones they suspect did not survive the incident.
The NBI regional office, in turn, has been trying to render assistance to the families by locating certain clearance applications.
The fingerprints contained in the applications can be used to compare with the fingerprints the NBI 7’s forensic division, headed by Dr. Renato Bautista, have obtained from the Princes of the Stars cadavers.
Identification
A match between the prints in the NBI clearance application and the prints Bautista and his forensic people have obtained means the positive identification of a cadaver.
If the application cannot be found locally, they send letters of request to the central office records division.
“We are asking the families members, if they can, to also try and secure the fingerprints from other sources like identification cards, or get dental records if they are more accessible,” Macabare said. (KNR)
