Seems rather obvious to me that will remain the case.
Both encryption and face recognition software rely on math and programming simple enough that a single person can make a functional one in less than a year from scratch. However, if using existing open source frameworks anyone can put it together either in a few days, though collecting a face database takes slightly longer, though in most cases anyone with an existing app of some kind can very easily collect the data largely automatically. Arguably I would not trust an encryption framework put together like that, but when it comes to face recognition I would.
So the question of if governments will be able to prevent non-sanctioned face recognition systems from the public sphere is rather similar to the question of if they are able to prevent the use of non-sanctioned encryption.
Both encryption and face recognition software rely on math and programming simple enough that a single person can make a functional one in less than a year from scratch. However, if using existing open source frameworks anyone can put it together either in a few days, though collecting a face database takes slightly longer, though in most cases anyone with an existing app of some kind can very easily collect the data largely automatically. Arguably I would not trust an encryption framework put together like that, but when it comes to face recognition I would.
So the question of if governments will be able to prevent non-sanctioned face recognition systems from the public sphere is rather similar to the question of if they are able to prevent the use of non-sanctioned encryption.
How is that going these days?