If someone throws a rock through a window, why shouldn't it be legal to run the surveillance through facial recognition? A crime was committed, we have a pic of the perpetrator.
Facial recognition should never be considered evidence. It is a clue. A way to sift through tens of thousands of possible entries and narrow it down to 5 for a human to review. We need the legal framework to ensure its not used as evidence by itself, but the investigatory tool is very useful.
So is eyewitness testimony. That's why we have trials. The problem in the case of a crime committed like that is not that the technology is used, it's when people assume the technology is infallible, when there's plenty of evidence to the contrary (just like there's not plenty of evidence that eyewitness testimony is not infallible and often subject to a bunch of problems).
If facial recognition is perceived as low accuracy, but can yield some leads for investigators that can be independently corroborated, that seems like a fine use of the technology. If we're worried about the public assuming it's more accurate than it is if used as evidence in trials, we can either pass some laws about its use as trial evidence (which is not the same as using it as a lead), or train defense attorneys and the public (often done through TV...) that it's use in the role of proving guilt is extremely limited because of it's false positive rate.
Everything is flawed and leads to false accusations, even something ridiculously black and white like electronic bank records. Witnesses, intoxication, bias, outright lying, guilt, etc. All evidence has flaws and potential bias. One need only look at all the false imprisonments that have happened over the years due to various bits of "evidence" to see that.
Instead, we should take the opposite approach: Invest heavily in this tech, and lightly-regulate glaringly bad aspects of it. E.g. For facial recognition, we can put down laws that punish unfair punishment of suspects. Or if we find employers that misappropriate facial recognition developed to record hours worked on the factory floor to punish them for chatting or going to the bathroom too many times, and we don't like that, then we regulate that.
We really went down the wrong path here somewhere, applying a black and white approach to things instead of just riding the in-between strategically and fairly. That's how we move forward as a society instead of legislating ourselves into irrelevance.
