Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The FBI National Crime Information Center 2000 (NCIC) is a collection of databases
supporting the activities of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in the
United States, the United States Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Canada [7]. Its pre-
decessor, the National Crime Information Center, was established by the FBI in January
1967 under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover.
When it was first activated, the NCIC consisted of about 95,000 records in five
databases: stolen automobiles, stolen license plates, stolen or missing guns, other stolen
items, and missing persons. Today NCIC databases contain more than 39 million
records. The databases have been expanded to include such categories as wanted per-
sons, criminal histories, people incarcerated in federal prisons, convicted sex offenders,
unidentified persons, people believed to be a threat to the president, foreign fugitives,
violent gang members, and suspected terrorists. More than 80,000 law enforcement
agencies have access to these data files. The NCIC processes about five million requests
for information each day, with an average response time of less than one second.
The FBI points to the following successes of the NCIC:
.
Investigating the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the NCIC provided the
FBI with the information it needed to link a fingerprint on the murder weapon to
James Earl Ray.
.
In 1992 the NCIC led to the apprehension of 81,750 “wanted” persons, 113,293
arrests, the location of 39,268 missing juveniles and 8,549 missing adults, and the
retrieval of 110,681 stolen cars.
.
About an hour after the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma state trooper Charles Hanger pulled over a
Mercury Marquis with no license plates. Seeing a gun in the back seat of the car,
Hanger arrested the driver—Timothy McVeigh—on the charge of transporting a
loaded firearm in a motor vehicle. He took McVeigh to the county jail, and the ar-
rest was duly entered into the NCIC database. Two days later, when federal agents
ran McVeigh's name through the NCIC, they saw Hanger's arrest record. FBI agents
reached the jail just before McVeigh was released (Figure 6.2). McVeigh was subse-
quently convicted of the bombing.
Critics of the National Crime Information Center point out ways in which the
existence of the NCIC has led to privacy violations of innocent people:
.
Erroneous records can lead law enforcement agencies to arrest innocent persons.
.
Innocent people have been arrested because their name is the same as someone
listed in the arrest warrants database.
.
The FBI has used the NCIC to keep records about people not suspected of any crime,
such as opponents of the Vietnam War.
.
Corrupt employees of law enforcement organizations with access to the NCIC have
sold information to private investigators and altered or deleted records.
.
People with access to the NCIC have illegally used it to search for criminal records
on acquaintances or to screen potential employees, such as babysitters.
