The project in North Carolina has already helped nab at least one suspect. Agents are eager to look for more criminals and possibly to expand the effort nationwide. But privacy advocates worry that the method allows authorities to track people who have done nothing wrong.

"Everybody's participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver's license," said Christopher Calabrese, an attorney who focuses on privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this year, investigators learned that a double-homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales had moved to North Carolina. The FBI took a 1991 booking photo from California and compared it with 30 million photos stored by the motor vehicle agency in Raleigh.

In seconds, the search returned dozens of drivers who resembled Corrales, and an FBI analyst reviewed a gallery of images before zeroing in on a man who called himself Jose Solis.

A week later, after corroborating Corrales' identity, agents arrested him in High Point, southwest of Greensboro, where they believe he had built a new life under the assumed name. Corrales is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles later this month.

"Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all," analyst Michael Garcia said. "If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that's a home run."

Facial-recognition software is not entirely new, but the North Carolina project is the first major step for the FBI as it considers expanding use of the technology to find fugitives nationwide.

So-called biometric information that is unique to each person also includes fingerprints and DNA. More distant possibilities include iris patterns in the eye, voices, scent and even a person's gait.

FBI officials have organized a panel of authorities to study how best to increase use of the software. It will take at least a year to establish standards for license photos, and there's no timetable to roll out the program nationally.

Calabrese said Americans should be concerned about how their driver's licenses are being used.

Licenses "started as a permission to drive," he said. "Now you need them to open a bank account. You need them to be identified everywhere. And suddenly they're becoming the de facto law enforcement database."

The class of 2012 may have more to worry about in the months following their graduation than a struggling job market.

There is a growing belief that the world as we know it will end shortly after current freshmen graduate. Most believers point to an ancient Mayan calendar as a harbinger of the end of days.

According to the Web site www.armageddononline.org, the Mayans developed a measure to count days called the Long Count, which began Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. and is scheduled to end Dec. 21, 2012.

There are many proposed theories of how the world will end. One involves the alignment of planets and galaxies during the Winter Solstice, which is scheduled to occur Dec. 21, 2012. Believers of this theory predict that a planetary alignment will affect the gravitational pull throughout the solar system and cause Earth’s polarity to reverse, making the North Pole the south and the South Pole the north.

Paul Stoddard, an NIU planetary science professor, discredits this theory.