Cops Have a Database of 117M Faces

There were 210M licensed drivers in the US with an expected annual growth rate of 1.6% [1]. Extrapolating this data gives 231M licensed drivers in 2016. From the article: &quot;...law enforcement in more than half of all states can search against the trove of photos stored for IDs like drivers’ licenses.&quot; Half that number and you get a number that&#x27;s pretty close to the number of faces in the database.<p>I&#x27;ve got no issue with using law enforcement having access to these pictures for identity verification (i.e. checking to make sure the face on a license matches the face of the person in the database). Although automatic systems setup to identify people in crowds is a bit too Minority Report for me. I understand that I don&#x27;t have any expectation to privacy when walking around in public but its a bit unnerving to have someone logging my every location and never needing a warrant, as publicly taken pictures wouldn&#x27;t require one whereas cellphone tracking would.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fhwa.dot.gov&#x2F;policyinformation&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;hf&#x2F;pl11028&#x2F;chapter4.cfm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fhwa.dot.gov&#x2F;policyinformation&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;hf&#x2F;pl11028&#x2F;c...</a>

and Facebook have a database that is many times larger.

okay, so when do we see police departments getting sued for unauthorized searches of members of the public?<p>when do we see police departments sanctioned for tracking people not suspected of any crime?<p>when do we find out that the police arrested or killed the wrong person based off of a faulty algorithm?<p>when do we start wearing dazzle camo on our face to disrupt them?

It&#x27;s probably an advantage of having an ugly asymmetric face - depending on the angle they may not recognize you.

License plate technology lets the police identify you from far away and in secret without ever talking to you.<p>(with some chance of error)<p>The government being able to figure out who you are, is not a story.<p>(Systematic &amp; automatic use of ID information to continually track you, is)

Edit: Missed the obvious source in the article.<p>Point redacted.