Searching a fingerprint against a national collection

Before that, a ten print card was classified by hand under the Henry system, filed by pattern, and compared by examiners, which took weeks and often failed. What was ceded is the search. Nobody reads through millions of cards any more, the system returns a short list of candidates and does it tens of thousands of times a day. Not ceded: the comparison that follows. A latent print lifted from a scene is still identified by an examiner who marks the points of agreement and signs a conclusion, and it is the examiner, not the system, who is cross examined about it in court.