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Federal authorities have had access to the photos of millions of Americans without their consent and Congressional approval by operating state licensing databases and have become a "monitoring infrastructure unprecedented "that some critics consider a system of" demand afterwards ", The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The agencies that would use the databases include the F.B.I and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most of the DMV photos represent citizens who have never been charged with a crime and are not the subject of an investigation.
"It's really a monitoring system, first of all, of demand, then of permission," said Jake Laperruque, a senior lawyer with a government watchdog. He said the FBI alone "performs 4,000 searches a month, and many of them go through the state's DMVs".
ICE did not immediately respond to an email from Fox News late Sunday. A spokesman for the agency told the newspaper that his "investigative techniques are generally considered sensitive to the forces of order".
The FBI did not immediately respond to Fox News, but sent the paper back to last month's testimony by a senior agency official who called facial recognition "to keep us safe."
The exclusive postal report cited internal documents obtained at the request of Georgetown Law researchers following the publication of public documents. The report, quoting a memo from the Government Accountability Office last month, also said that since 2011, the FBI has recorded 390,000 facial recognition searches in various departments, including DMV.
Representative Elijah Cummings, D – MD, told the newspaper that access to information by law enforcement was often done in the shadows and without consent.
The report states that 21 states allow this practice, while cities like San Francisco have banned the procedure from public agencies.
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