Prompted by privacy concerns, government officials are scrutinizing a controversial technology that matches faces in a crowd to a database of suspected criminals.

The US military reportedly paid New Jersey-based Visionics millions of dollars to develop FaceIt software, which, according to company literature, "recognizes faces at a distance, in a crowd and at a glance." The system creates a digital map of an individual's face by translating the contours into mathematical formulas the company says are nearly as unique as fingerprints.

The technology came under national scrutiny after police in Tampa, Florida, installed a surveillance system equipped with FaceIt on the streets of Ybor City, the city's nightlife district. A police officer operates the system remotely from a control room. On Thursday through Saturday nights and during special events cameras scan street crowds for suspected criminals and missing children.

In January, Tampa officials used a similar technology to scan crowds at the Super Bowl. The system spotted 19 people with outstanding warrants, but no arrests were made.

The Tampa City Council will vote Thursday night on a proposition asking Mayor Dick Greco to remove the system. The vote is largely symbolic: Only Greco has the power to cancel the city's contract with Visionics, something the mayor says he has no plans to do.

"As far as I'm concerned, the cameras will stay," Greco said. "The people who are opposed to this just don't understand it."

"When I was mayor the first time, we were the first police department to use a helicopter, and people were against that," Greco said. "They thought we were going to spy on them from the air. Now every major department has one."

But the controversy surrounding the technology isn't likely to die down anytime soon. Proving once again that politics makes strange bedfellows, forces from both the left and the right have lined up to oppose FaceIt. The American Civil Liberties Union recently teamed with House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), to issue a joint statement opposing Tampa's use of the software.

"We are extremely troubled by this unprecedented expansion in high tech surveillance in the United States," the statement reads. "We believe that technology should not be used to create a 'virtual lineup' of Americans who are not suspected of having done anything wrong."

In a report published Wednesday, the Washington Post revealed that the Defense Department has given Visionics more than $2 million to fund development of the face-recognition technology.

According to government papers the Post reviewed, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to develop a system that can identify "humans, alone or in groups, from great distances" -- and even in the dark -- as part of an anti-terrorism initiative.

Armey called for a General Accounting Office investigation into federal spending on surveillance technology.

The "public deserves to know to what extent their government is responsible for deploying this technology," Armey told the Post.