>So back to the blurry security camera footage of a license plate or a face. Sure, that "hash" can reliably tell you that it wasn't a sasquatch that committed the robbery, but it literally doesn't contain the data necessary to _ever_ prove it was the suspect in question, even if the techs _can_ prove that the suspect hashes to the image in the footage.

For a face, sure, for printed text/license plates there are effective deblurring algorithms that in some cases may rebuild a readable image.

A (IMHO good) software is this one (was freeware, now it is Commercial, this is the last freeware version):

https://github.com/Y-Vladimir/SmartDeblur/downloads

You can try it (just for the fun of it) on these two images:

https://articles.forensicfocus.com/2014/10/08/can-you-get-th...

https://forensicfocus.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/out-of-foc...

https://forensicfocus.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/moving-car...

For the first choose "Out of Focus Blur" and play with the values, you should get a decent image at roughly Radius 8, Smooth 40%, Correction Strength 0%, Edge Feather 10%

For the second choose "motion Blur" and play with the values, you should get a decent image at roughly Length 14, Angle 34, Smooth 50%,