Why is a facial recognition database dangerous though? The vast majority of Americans publicly upload pictures and videos of their faces online in a way that it would be trivial for any nation state to gather them up.

Everything you've pointed to can be done already by mining the publicly available treasure trove of YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, etc. A pretty small team can scrape these sites and do what you're insinuating.

And lastly, I still don't see the danger of releasing this info? I mean, can't any foreigner travelling on a tourist visa record public vistas for 30 days and essentially do the same thing?