An automatic fingerprint identification system called Orion has been ordered by the Belgian Ministry of Justice from De La Rue Printrak, Basingstoke, Hampshire, in a deal worth several million pounds. Orion is the latest version of Printrak’s fingerprint system, recording details of both temprints fingerprints taken from the hand, and latent prints – those collected from the scene of a crime. Dabs are digitised and recorded on a Compact Disk optical storage system linked to several databases. These are interrogated from workstations via a central processor – the system is based on DEC MicroVAX hardware. David Rigg, managing director of De La Rue Printrak, regards the Belgian deal as an important part of the company’s strategy for the 1992 Single European Market, and hopes the system will in future be used as part of a Europe-wide interlinked fingerprint information base. The deal follows the sale of similar Printrak systems by Denmark, Norway and Switzerland. In the UK, Printrak is still awaitng the outcome of a Home Office evaluation of Orion against three other competing fingerprint systems, (CI No 1,003), one of which is to replace its ageing Logica fingerprint system by 1992. The preferred system will form part of the Home Office’s Holmes project, an attempt to computerise details of all unsolved major crime.
