The databases are primarily intended to prevent people from obtaining multiple licenses under different names. That can help prevent identity theft and stop people who try to get a second license after their first has been suspended.

“The states are finding hundreds of cases of fraud each year in each state,” said J. Scott Carr, executive vice president of the Digimarc Corporation, which says it has sold biometric technology to motor vehicle departments in seven states and has a role in the production of more than two-thirds of all driver’s licenses in the United States.

But the databases can also be used for law enforcement purposes beyond detecting fraud.

A page concerning Mr. Howell, printed out from the “America’s Most Wanted” Web site, is taped to the wall of the investigators’ office here. It is a kind of trophy.

“It’s always exciting when you get a hit and you’re getting someone really bad off the streets,” said Maria Conlon, a facial-recognition specialist at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. “That’s when everyone’s morale goes up.”

Most of the work is less glamorous. The analysts’ main job is to check roughly 5,000 new driver’s license photographs every day against the database. A computer algorithm that takes into account about 8,000 facial data points does a rough cut, and analysts examine potential matches, rejecting the vast majority.

That computers alone cannot do the job does not surprise Richard M. Smith, an expert in digital security. “It’s probably one of the more inaccurate biometrics,” Mr. Smith said, referring to facial-recognition technologies.

After computers narrow the field of potential matches, Ms. Conlon and her colleagues get to work.

“We don’t look at hair,” Ms. Conlon said. “We do look at lips, noses, ears.”