Twenty (!) years ago I got home from a drug store shopping trip and realized I had been charged for some expensive items I didn't buy. I called, they immediately found me on their surveillance recording, saw the items were actually bought by the previous person in line, and quickly refunded me. No face recognition was involved (they just used the timestamp from my receipt), but the experience immediately made me a fan of video monitoring.
I worked in a retail/pc repair place about 10 years ago. Boss phoned me one day to say X (customer) device is missing have I seen it? I immediately knew it had been stolen and who by. I was on my own in the shop, 10 minutes before closing and I had been busy for the previous hour so the device was in the front of the shop instead of stored away securely like they normally would be. I was able to find the video within about 30 seconds of getting in and pinpoint the guy. I actually recognised him and was able to tell the police where I saw him somewhat frequently (as I lived nearby too).
Without it, I think all the gingers would have pointed at me rather than me being tired and making a mistake.
It's a different thing though. In your case they used a timestamp to manually look at footage and confirm an identity. In OP's case, automated recognition is used to identify and track people, in aggregation mass.
I was talking with an employee at a grocery store, who told me that management one day decided to review the surveillance footage, and fired a bunch of employees who were caught pilfering.
I had a friend who was a checker at a large local chain, and before shift one day he popped into the security office (he was friends with the head of security) to say hi, and they had every camera in the front of the store trained on the employee working the customer service desk.
I'm not in the least surprised. People steal from businesses routinely, it's all part of the anti-business mentality.
Case in point - one time the cash machine on the bank exterior disbursed an extra 20 to me. I counted it carefully, sure enough, an extra one. So I went around to the other side, went in, and handed it to the teller with an explanation. She about fell over in shock.
