TL;DR: A GAO audit found the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ran at least 549 facial recognition searches using Clearview AI and Vigilant Solutions between October 2019 and March 2022, with no dedicated policy, no risk assessment, and no training for agents. ATF headquarters didn't even know its own staff was doing it. The agency claims it stopped in April 2023, but got caught requesting facial recognition photos during the July 2024 Trump assassination investigation. Now ATF asks state and local partners to run searches on its behalf, dodging its own restrictions. An April 8, 2025 congressional hearing brought all of this into the open.
The Congressional Hearing
On April 8, 2025, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance held a hearing titled "A Continued Pattern of Government Surveillance of U.S. Citizens." Chairman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) called four witnesses to testify:[1]
- Gene Schaerr, General Counsel, Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability
- Kia Hamadanchy, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU National Political Advocacy Division
- James Czerniawski, Senior Policy Analyst, Americans for Prosperity
- Philip Kiko, Former Judiciary Committee Chief of Staff and General Counsel
Notice that witness list. ACLU and Americans for Prosperity. Left and right. Privacy is one of the few issues that can still unite people in Washington, when a federal agency gets caught running facial recognition on gun owners with zero guardrails.
Schaerr warned of a "surveillance dragnet that operates far beyond its legal mandate." Hamadanchy told the subcommittee that "many of the FBI's Section 702 queries do not involve exigent circumstances." Czerniawski pointed to how the "government sidesteps Fourth Amendment protections that require warrants" by simply buying data from brokers.[1]
What the GAO Found
Two Government Accountability Office reports tell the story.
The first, published September 2023 (GAO-23-105607), surveyed seven federal law enforcement agencies across the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. It found ATF conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches between October 2019 and March 2022 using commercial services including Clearview AI, a company with a database of over 30 billion facial images scraped from social media, news sites, and mugshot databases.[2]
All seven agencies initially used facial recognition services without requiring staff to take any related training. ATF had:
- No dedicated policy governing facial recognition use
- No risk assessment of the technology
- No training requirements for agents operating it
- No tracking of what non-federal systems employees accessed
ATF headquarters was "initially unaware" its own staff was sending photos to commercial facial recognition services.[2]
The second GAO report (GAO-24-107372), published March 2024, found that the FBI, CBP, ATF, and DEA still lacked "guidance or policies specific to facial recognition technology that addressed civil rights and civil liberties."[3]
"We Stopped" (Except They Didn't)
ATF officials told the GAO that as of April 2023, staff were "not directly accessing facial recognition services." Case closed, right?
Not quite.
On July 13, 2024, a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A report from Senator Ron Johnson's investigation revealed that "photos were sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for facial recognition... The ATF was apparently requesting the photos for facial recognition purposes."[4]
That's 15 months after ATF said it stopped.
The State Partner Loophole
ATF officials acknowledged to the GAO that the agency "routinely partners with state and local law enforcement agencies who may use such services during a joint investigation."[2]
Translation: ATF asks state and local cops to run the facial recognition searches for them.
Same result. Same technology. Same privacy violations. But ATF can claim it doesn't "directly" use commercial facial recognition anymore.
This isn't an ATF-specific trick. It's a structural problem across federal law enforcement. When an agency faces restrictions on a surveillance tool, it routes the request through a partner that doesn't face those restrictions. The data flows back. The legal fiction holds.
If ATF is doing this, the question that should keep you up at night: who else is?
Congress Demands Answers
On March 27, 2025, Chairman Biggs and Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) sent a letter to ATF Acting Director Kash Patel demanding:[5]
- All internal and external communications between ATF and facial recognition providers
- All contracts, payments, and agreements related to biometric surveillance
- All emails, memos, and instructions from ATF leadership regarding use of the technology
The April 10 deadline for those documents has passed. ATF's response (or lack of one) will tell us whether this investigation has teeth.
The Bigger Picture
ATF isn't the only agency the GAO caught asleep at the wheel. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a 194-page report in September 2024 examining the civil rights implications of federal facial recognition use. Chair Rochelle Garza said the technology "poses significant risks to civil rights, especially for marginalized groups."[6]
The numbers are staggering. The FBI conducted 57,000 warrantless backdoor searches of Americans' communications in 2023 alone under Section 702 of FISA. In December 2024, a federal court in United States v. Hasbajrami ruled for the first time that warrantless FBI searches under Section 702 violated the Fourth Amendment.[1]
Polling shows over 75% of Americans support requiring warrants for government access to their data. Congress has the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which already passed the House and would prohibit agencies from buying data that would otherwise require a warrant. The Government Surveillance Reform Act offers bipartisan reforms to Section 702.
The tools exist. The public support exists. What's missing is the political will to use them.
Why Gun Owners Should Care
The cross-partisan outrage here is real and worth paying attention to. Gun Owners of America, the Buckeye Firearms Association, Texas Gun Rights, the Second Amendment Foundation (organizations not typically aligned with the ACLU) are all sounding alarms about ATF facial recognition.[4]
A federal agency used commercial facial recognition to identify people exercising a constitutional right. No warrant. No policy. No oversight. If ATF can do this to gun owners, every other federal agency can do it to anyone exercising any other right: attending a protest, visiting a mosque, entering a reproductive health clinic.
The technology doesn't discriminate between rights. Neither does the abuse.
What to Watch
- ATF's document response: Did they comply with the Biggs-Davidson April 10 deadline?
- Section 702 expiration: FISA Section 702 sunsets April 20, 2026, 18 days from now. Reform or clean extension will determine whether FBI's 57,000 warrantless searches continue.
- Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act: Would close the data broker loophole agencies use to buy what they can't legally collect.
- State-level facial recognition bans: Cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee have banned government facial recognition. More may follow.
References
- Biometric Update: Congressional Hearing Reveals Deep Concerns About Federal Surveillance Practices (April 2026)
- GAO-23-105607, Facial Recognition Services: Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Should Take Actions (September 2023)
- GAO-24-107372, Facial Recognition Technology: Federal Law Enforcement Agency Efforts Related to Civil Rights and Training (March 2024)
- Gun Owners of America: ATF Is Using Facial Recognition AI to ID Gun Owners
- AmmoLand: ATF Facial Recognition Scandal Deepens: Chairman Biggs Demands Records
- U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: The Civil Rights Implications of the Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology (September 2024)