The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have allegedly turned state driver’s license databases into a facial recognition database, scanning millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent, says a news report. 

The public-records requests by Georgetown Law researchers revealed thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents and emails over the past five years, the reports ays. Although police have had access to fingerprints, DNA and other “biometric data” taken from criminal suspects, the DMV's database contain the photos of the majority of residents in states, most of whom have never been charged with a crime, making facial recognition into a powerful routine investigative tool, says the report.

Since 2011, the FBI has logged more than 390,000 facial-recognition searches of federal and local databases, including state DMV databases, showing that federal investigators have working relationships with DMV officials, the report says. FBI and ICE agents logged more than 1,000 facial recognition searches between 2015 and 2017 in Utah, the records show; although some details are hidden, dozens of the searches are marked as having returned a “possible match.”