“The database isn’t limited to just criminals, and it’s completely searchable thanks to facial recognition tech. Generally, there’s no need for a court order or warrant to make a search, just ‘law enforcement purposes,’ which is about as vague as it gets. As for reach, 42 states are involved with the system. The State department has its own little database, consisting of some 230 million faces belonging to visa-holding foreigners and passport-holding citizens alike. As video-surveillance becomes more and more common, it’s easy to see how this becomes a modern-day fingerprint index of not just criminals but of anyone with an ID.”
http://gizmodo.com/the-massive-facial-recognition-database-thats-hiding-i-513765879
