AFISs have been used in large-scale civil identifications, the chief purpose of which is to prevent multiple enrollments in an electoral, welfare, driver licensing, or similar system.
Another benefit of a civil AFISs is to check the background of job applicants for sensitive posts and educational personnel who have close contact with children.
Many other countries and entities — including Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, India, Israel, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Turkey, Morocco, Italy, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Australia, Denmark, the International Criminal Police Organization, and various states, provinces, and local administrative regions — have their own systems, which are used for a variety of purposes, including criminal identification, applicant background checks, receipt of benefits, and receipt of credentials (such as passports).
They also vary in terms of features such as image rotation invariance and independence from a reference point (usually, the "core", or center of the fingerprint pattern).
The accuracy of the algorithm, print matching speed, robustness to poor image quality, and the characteristics noted above are critical elements of system performance.
[clarification needed] Some larger AFIS vendors deploy custom hardware while others use software to attain matching speed and throughput.
though, "lights-out" or "auto-confirm" algorithms produce "identified" or "non-identified" responses without a human operator looking at the prints, provided the matching score is high enough.
After careful consideration, it was determined by the FBI that the fingerprints left on the bag had matched to an individual in Portland, Oregon named Brandon Mayfield.