This was what I always suspected pre-Snowden: that the government simply wasn't capable of creating a system to effectively monitor all internet traffic because they didn't have the technical chops. Which, in, say, 2001, might have been true.
Turned out all they needed was time and money and they had both and then once it was revealed that they could do it and actually do it rather well it came as a shock (to me, at least).
Two years ago was a long time in camera and facial recognition technology.
The police is pretty open about the legal powers they have and the technology they use.
And people have already been caught by facial recognition - the submitted article talks about it.
A woman was found stabbed to death outside her house, everyone who would have any reason to mean her harm had a reliable alibi.
Until the CCTV footage was analysed properly, and a suspicious car was found to have unique identifying marks. Further research of phone records revealed that in fact her husband was the primary architect of her murder and had orchestrated it with others.
CCTV was pivotal in detection and conviction. Nobody gives a shit about your phone or your tablet. People's lives matter, and one murderer caught is worth a thousand fines which would be overturned on appeal.
Or have you heard it and are merely blind to how you are giving up essential liberty to purchase little temporary safety? "One good thing is worth a thousand bad things". How about that. I've never heard someone so elegantly crap all over their own argument.
You do know that these "appeals" aren't free, right? Or guaranteed. If you happen to be of a paler complexion and of modest means, they can be had for the low, low cost of merely your job and everything you have. If you happen to be a poor minority, however...
Of course, a million cameras running 24/7 produce an enormous amount of data, that just increases exponentially as quality improves. They can probably easily discard 90% of the footage with basic checks (is there anything besides the background visible), and use a smart compression algorithm, but still.
I'm generally okay with surveillance, but people should know the capabilities of what's already in place, and your comment seems to trivialise the powers they have.
If it had been a more serious crime (murder, rape) they would have looked for all the other security cameras in the area, and then worked out the route the criminal took to get to the crime scene and to get away from the crime scene.
The images they showed you were not good - but with a million cameras there's going to be variability in image quality and length of data storage.
It's more about the population feeling surveilled, as a means to not question power etc, than about helping solve crimes.
Oh, wait, it is useful for extorting motorists who stray into an unmarked "bus lane", but that's about it.