Photographs of millions of Australians will be stored by the Immigration Department, and this "biometric data" gathering could extend to fingerprinting and iris scanning under the Abbott government's controversial counterterrorism laws.

The "foreign fighters" bill means there will be a major expansion of facial recognition imaging of Australians passing through international airports in a crackdown on passport fraud that could eventually apply to a wide range of biometric data – which could be shared with other government agencies.

There will be a major expansion of facial recognition imaging.

Critics say the danger of such information being hacked is profound, given many personal electronic devices are now secured by fingerprints and iris scans.

The sheer scale of the personal information that would stream into the government's databanks is set to open one of the first fissures in the largely bipartisan approach to national security, with Labor warning that the legislation poses a danger to privacy.