[astar]

Facial recognition is still treated like some magical technology, like the "zoom in, enhance" feature much mocked about on TV crime shows. I bet Facebook's technology is ahead of law enforcement's in terms of data, algorithm, and refinement, and yet it still stumbles on pretty obvious faces (if you have the default auto-tag feature left on)

[brk]

Correct, and you're talking about cases where you might have literally 500,000+ pixels on a face (close-up shot from an 8MP camera).

The average cctv shot will have around 200-1000 pixels on the entire face, if you're lucky.

[gcr]

Facebook only has to distinguish between friends of the uploader.

US law enforcement has to distinguish between 300 million civilians.

Of the two, I would expect Facebook to be more successful at identifying peolpe.

[anigbrowl]

"zoom in, enhance" feature much mocked about on TV crime shows

Actually, those jokes refer to a scene in Blade Runner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHepKd38pr0

[socillion]

NTSF:SD:SUV Parody of the 'enhance' trope in cop drama setting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbCWYm7B_B4&t=58s