Blending into the background may become a thing of the past. A new Japanese security camera has the ability to search millions of faces with one click. An image captured on the Orwellian invention can also search other databases to track people.

­Representatives from device’s creators Hitachi say the camera uses image-recognition software in combination with algorithms that group similar faces together to create a thumbnail photo of a person.

Where before authorities would have spent hours trawling through CCTV footage, an individual can now be found in the blink of an eye. The camera can search a staggering 36 million faces in less than a second for a match of the thumbnail photo.

Furthermore, once the image is saved it can be used to search other databases for a match.

Despite the technology’s undeniable potential for surveillance purposes, it does have a few limitations. Namely, it can only scan faces within a 30 degree angle of the camera and the images must be 40x40 pixels in size.