In 2014, the FBI announced their plans to launch a massive database containing 52 million images of faces, in order to keep tabs on Americans through a biometric facial recognition program known as Next Generation Identification (NGI). However, according to an exhaustive report by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO), the program is far larger than they claimed, and ominous.

According to the report, the system actually contains about 411 million photos, only 30 million of those are "civil and criminal mugshots." The overwhelming majority of images in the FBI database are of innocent people.

According to the GAO Report, as reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, FBI's Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation (FACE) Services unit not only has access to FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) face recognition database of nearly 30 million civil and criminal mug shot photos, but also has access to the State Department's Visa and Passport databases, the Defense Department's biometric database, and the drivers license databases of at least 16 states.