The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are having a tiff about fingerprints. The critical issue, according to a new report by the Inspector General's Office: Should two fingers or ten be fingerprinted?

The core of the problem, the report said, was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department disagree on two basic issues: whether 2 or 10 fingers should be printed and what agencies should have access to those prints.

The F.B.I. has for years used prints of all 10 fingers to identify criminals. But the Department of Homeland Security relies on prints of only the two index fingers to keep track of illegal aliens. Similarly, both the Homeland Security and State Departments have since September relied on digital prints of the two index fingers to keep records of visitors to the United States from 27 specified nations.

The net result of the dispute is that 99% of visitors to the U.S. from foreign countries do not get their fingerprints checked against the FBI database that has 47 million prints and which includes some suspected non-American terrorists. Homeland Securiy's database is much smaller.