n a technological environment that is dependent upon standards to ensure that the technology works correctly, there are sometimes cases in which the technology advances faster than the standards. As early as 2004, this was the situation in the electronic fingerprint capture community.

As the National Institute of Justice and other organizations began to solicit ideas for the rapid capture of fingerprints, a variety of companies and universities began developing “contactless” fingerprint systems that, unlike the existing livescan systems, did not require the prints to come in contact with a scanner surface.