Pakistan gets a new criminal identification system.
DefenseTech reports that the United States has awarded a $9.4 million contract to Lockheed Martin to develop a state-of-the-art fingerprint identification system to help Pakistan identify criminals and terrorists.
The Pakistan Automated Fingerprint Identification System (PAFIS) comprises a central fingerprint database, criminal history system, and geographically distributed access stations to serve police forces throughout the country. PAFIS will link Pakistani law enforcement community with Interpol and national police agencies such as the FBI. The United States has a similar program with the Republic of the Philippines. [DefenseTech]
Pakistan itself should have little problems identifying those terrorists, its the trackback to the FBI that is important. The hope behind this venture rests on the Pakistani authorities actually fingerprinting the terrorists after identifying them.
Will data from the fingerprinting device be available to the US. If that is the case then US can get knowledge of movements of people in and out of Pakistan. would be useful.