Tom Kraay, principal of Booze Allen & Hamilton, is working to pioneer a system using parallel hardware to track crime circles. The idea is that dollar bills are sorted by serial number and then they can traced via the banking system. Most notes are handled with a nice, fat thumb print which can be picked up using iodine. The organisation can then trace which bank a person is using by tracing the banknote through the various branches of a bank and comparing thumb prints. The suspected criminal can be tracked to a particular bank and if he moves across country he can still be traced. The vast amounts of processing that are required to trace so many banknote serial numbers is carried out on a parallel machine. The company is using one from Cray Research Inc because of its strengths in sorting analysis. Alternatively the system could be used to log specific bills out and in, Kraay says. So if illegal drugs, for example, are bought with a bill and the serial number is noted, then the bill itself can be traced to the bank it is paid in at and the bank in turn can pinpoint which account the money is being paid into. The system could also be used to trace money seized in a bank raid, he said.
