Soon, police officers will have access to a database of foreign applications for U.S. visas, the New York Times reports (State Department Link Will Open Visa Database to Police Officers).
The database has 50 million applications on file, and photos of 20 million applicants.
"There is a potential source of information that isn't available elsewhere," said M. Miles Matthew, a senior Justice Department official who works with an interagency drug intelligence group. "It's not just useful for terrorism. It's drug trafficking, money laundering, a variety of frauds, not to mention domestic crimes."
The database is one of the new changes in the FBI's computer system. In addition, the State Dept, the FBI, police depts and intelligence agencies will now be linked to one another; and, instead of resorting to phones, faxes and couriers for the transmission of sensitive correspondence, the FBI and other agencies will use encrypted email.