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PHOENIX — A new state program to link video cameras with facial-identification software is causing some alarm.

The program, unveiled last week by Gov. Janet Napolitano, is an unnecessary intrusion into individual privacy of people who are guilty of nothing but walking or driving in public places, said Alessander Meetze, director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

That assessment is disputed by Napolitano. She said the system is designed to help find terrorists and other "people of interest."

Anyway, the governor said, many cities and government agencies already have cameras that are monitored. All this program does, she said, is speed up what police already can do: Use driver's license photos to track people down.

But Meetze said there is a big difference between police watching TV monitors of live cameras trained on public places and actually scanning the photos of those who pass in front of those cameras.

"We see this as the equivalent of asking for ID without having probable cause," she said. In essence, Meetze said, it subjects everyone — whether a suspect or not — to an "electronic police lineup."

The system, developed by Phoenix-based Hummingbird Defense Systems, links cameras with facial recognition software to digitize the images of the people it sees. It then compares that with the more than 8 million images the state already has on file — mostly the photos taken for driver's licenses.

In its most basic form it allows police who have a photo of a suspect, such as from a bank robbery, to compare it with the photos of people on file, said Steve Greschner, the company's chief executive officer.

Napolitano said police already have access to that driver's license photo database.

What the new technology does, Greschner said, is scrap the need for police to manually compare photos they have with the database. Instead, it can compare the photo of the wanted person with the entire database in less than 15 seconds.

But it also can look for what the governor called "people of interest."

For example, she said, the database can be linked with cameras at the border and at airports and bus terminals to look for human smugglers and terrorists.

These are people whose pictures law enforcement has. The system, which is based at the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, then can compare it with the real-time photos being fed from cameras.

The cameras at airports and other secure locations aren't the only source of photos: Napolitano noted there already are cameras throughout many cities that could be linked to the system. And the governor said she wants an emphasis of putting cameras at schools to improve campus safety.

"In this way, with a camera in a school, you can detect whether somebody's coming on the school lines who's going to 'ping' the system," she said, such as a known sex offender.

"And then you can go out, you can call the school and get out there and say, 'What are you doing? Get out of here,' " she said.

Napolitano said she also hopes to link existing cameras operated by the federal government at the border with the state database.

Meetze said all this is very intrusive.

"This is actually cross-checking 'mug shots' of ordinary people with databases before any crime has been committed," she said. "They're subjecting everybody who walks down the street to an electronic police lineup."

Meetze said what makes the intrusion even more offensive is that it may not be effective. She cited a study done at the Palm Beach Airport where a similar system failed to recognize volunteers more than half the time.

And Meetze said criminals — those who don't want to be detected — can fool the system simply by wearing sunglasses or turning their heads slightly.

While the system can "ping" when a camera finds someone being sought, people most should not fear that a record of their travels is being recorded, said Ray Churay, chief deputy of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

He said each time a camera scans a face and creates a digital equation, it compares it to the list of those people whom the computer has been told to monitor. Churay said if there is no match, the equation disappears, and there is no permanent record.

That is in contrast to another system unveiled less than two months ago that uses cameras mounted on Department of Public Safety patrol cars to a database of stolen and wanted vehicles.

While that system also "pings" when it gets a hit, it can store the list of every license scanned for up to three months. And that information uses global positioning system technology to say exactly when and where that vehicle was seen.