Identifying US Colonial Subjects

Centering the development of bureaucratic and biometric surveillance technologies, this chapter explores the colonial history of the fingerprint. Born of empire to identify people with disparate cultures and languages than the police, because the fingerprint was replicable and its records were transferable, it became a unifying tactic for police in both imperial and domestic contexts. Specifically, the collection and hoarding of biometric data during the US occupation of the Philippines archipelago and its corresponding collection in domestic local and federal law enforcement created the foundation for a century of international collaboration, data-sharing, and globalized policing.