[Jhoffa_]

I suppose it could have been scanned in, databased and either rejected or accepted but no alarm was raised because 9not surprisingly) it hasn't been found to match prints tied to criminal activity.

I suppose it's also possible that it was merely forwarded to some federal agency and either sits in limbo or has suffered a similar fate as described above.

[sam_paine]

...because (not surprisingly) it hasn't been found to match prints tied to criminal activity.

Exactly...but we can deduce that they have not even pulled my print for comparison...yet. You can't compare fingerprints without reducing the image to what they call "minutia points." The places where the lines split and join and end. These are measured on a radial coordinate system that self-aligns when you compare them.

So they would've had to encode my image into the very small bit of data req'd to "have my minutia points on file."

But that's when the computer would balk at having a crummy image. So it's clear to me that they haven't encoded my print, or did try and just omitted my "minutia points" from the database.

Either way, they refused to tell me what they were going to do with the print (future use they said) and at least now I have some level of feedback/control over when/if they use it.