This year marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of a fingerprint registry by Helsinki police. It was the start of the department's technical crime investigations.
Technical investigations today are a composite of a wide range of techniques. In addition to fingerprints, a hair or a flake of skin left behind at the scene of a crime may identify the culprit. The introduction of DNA analysis during the 90's revolutionized the field.
Up to now, police have lacked the technical means to create a voice print registry. Soon that as well will become a reality.
Kimmo Himberg of the National Bureau of Investigation's crime lab says that the technology is now so advanced that registering the voices of criminals in a database should be a matter of routine within a few years. Another advance will be direct remote cooperation between investigators in the field and their colleagues in the lab.
But what is technically possible is not always permitted for the police to do. For example, identifying a voice from a phone call requires court approval. And, information that can be registered in a database for identification purposes is restricted to convicted criminals, although there are suggestions aired from time to time of expanding that to the population in general.
