"These images, which were often poor quality, were captured from CCTV or employees’ mobile phone cameras." - the article

"You don't think the technology will catch up?"

First, technology can not transcend GIGO. GIGO is fundamental.

Secondly:

"When a customer entered a store who supposedly matched an existing image on its database, employees would receive an automatic alert instructing them to take action — and the majority of the time this instruction was to “approach and identify,” meaning verifying the customer’s identity and asking them to leave." - the article

Face matching is not a hard problem for computers. Face matching is a hard problem, period. We humans seem to have dedicated hardware for it, and we are not generally a "dedicated hardware" sort of species when it comes to that sort of task. GIGO is fundamental for humans too.

>Face matching is not a hard problem for computers. Face matching is a hard problem, period.

If that were true, then federal law enforcement agencies wouldn't use social media as a database for facially recognizing people suspected of crimes.

As I stated in my other post, when you add more information into the scan the situation changes. Social media adds social network information which carries a lot of other info.

The task of picking a face out of hundreds, matched with the other additional cues social media can add, is radically different than the task of picking a face out of the entire human population. It is the latter that is infeasible.