Movement toward taking a statistical approach to the quality of evidence from fingerprint similarity

Before you read that article, what was your opinion of fingerprint evidence?

My first exposure to the idea that fingerprint evidence might not be all that good was in L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach, in which the viewpoint character, a policeman, wonders whether all fingerprints really are unique, and also wonders whether the government might disappear people who had identical fingerprints.

(Surprisingly to me, the Salon article mentions that identical snowflakes have been found.)

My second exposure was an article in Lingua Franca, which brought up the more plausible issue that fingerprints from crime scenes are likely to be partial and/or fuzzy.