Don't rule out a 3rd factor: in the facial recognition industry it is difficult to earn a profit. In general a FR client already has an existing camera network they want to add FR - meaning the quality control over the image quality is already gone. They also already have a security video management system, so whatever FR solution IBM proposes has to interoperate with that other pre-existing video management software. So right there, two traditional sources of major profit are already occupied, and in order to play in this industry one's FR software needs to be able to work with any pre-existing camera network(s) as well as interoperate with any pre-existing video surveillance software... setting all that up is not cheap and the customer is often low-tech and expecting magic...

> If every person who breaks into a car or sells something in the street is caught, this would be an insane surge in the prison population.

Isn't this a good thing? Breaking into peoples cars is wrong, we want to prevent people from doing this.

Apparently it's a bad thing, since California virtually legalized car break-ins (it's not a felony, so it's not really investigated).

Would you rather lose your car window or would you rather sacrifice someone's life?

I'm fine with "sacrificing" a few years of life of people who decided to smash my car's windows, yes.

Honestly, I'm fine with 'someones life', because its not 'someones life'.

You're exaggerating the argument. Stop trying to justify social degeneration as acceptable.

Presumably, the higher likelihood of prison time would then deter people from crimes that previously had a positive expected value.

I suspect the second-order effect would be people just mostly stopping doing those breakins. They just don't pay off if you know you will be caught.