This automated already, and you don't need a face. Flock does it.
It does. But more like “the black male with the red hoodie is here”
They don’t say “hibf just walked into the 7-11” yet. The Feds probably have a system that can do that for car passengers traveling on “drug corridors” (ie. I95) today.
As the cost of compute and wireless communications continues to drop, facial recognition will be prolific. There are more limitations with cameras, but AI will make it easy to backtrack movement to a place where they get a clean shot that can identify you.
As an example, the transit authority in NYC Metro was able to plug existing security feeds from trains into Amazon Rekognition to count heads, which feeds their ticketing app — you can see which carriages are full. As time goes on, they’ll become able to track the breadcrumbs individuals from seat to platform. (If not already)
Detectives do this manually today. I was on a jury where the purse snatcher was followed by various cameras until he got on a bus. They pulled the bus passes and tracked his pass back to his girlfriend.