The FBI has a searchable database of 411 million photos — and yours is probably one of them

The FBI has a facial recognition database with millions of people&#039;s photos. — (Image credit: Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

The FBI has a searchable facial recognition database of more than 411 million photographs, reveals a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The images are sourced from the State Department's collection of passport and visa applications, plus driver's license pictures from 16 states. The FBI is in negotiations to get license photos from another 18 states right now and presumably will push for access to all 50 in the future.

The GAO's findings criticize the FBI for inadequate privacy protections and public transparency, arguing that the agency is not in full compliance with the 1974 federal Privacy Act. The report also raised concerns about the accuracy of the biometic database, noting that "FBI officials stated that they have not assessed how often [facial recognition] searches erroneously match a person to the database (the false positive rate)."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.