Washington (CNN) The FBI has access to more than 641 million photos of people's faces in searchable form, a government watchdog official said on Tuesday.

The information released in prepared testimony from US Government Accountability Office homeland security and justice director Gretta Goodwin said the 641 million figure was accurate as of April 2019. In the release on Tuesday, the GAO said it had called on the Department of Justice and FBI to take further steps to improve privacy and "ensure the accuracy of its face recognition capabilities."

The FBI's available trove of photos contains some from its own face recognition system that includes photos from the criminal justice system, like mugshots, and others available from state and federal government databases, like driver's license photos, the GAO said. The 641 million figure refers specifically "to photos, not the total number of identities," according to Goodwin's testimony.

The latest GAO information came out in a hearing before the House Oversight Committee on government use of facial recognition technology.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan appeared to express dismay over the lack of consent from people to have their photos available to the FBI and the lack of legislative action on the issue.

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