Do you also apply this reasoning to fingerprinting, DNA analysis, tire prints, and ballistics comparisons? Like most people, I don't understand all of the failure modes involved with those technologies, but they do seem to be helpful tools for bringing violent criminals to justice.

I also think eyewitness testimony has many failure modes. If anything, it's probably less accurate than current facial recognition tech and biased in ways that are harder to determine. Yet I wouldn't want to ban all use of eyewitness testimony.

Banning facial recognition seems like overkill. Instead, it makes more sense to restrict it so that we can get the good parts (catching violent criminals) without the bad parts (oppressive surveillance state). Instead of banning all fingerprinting and DNA analysis, we have rules for how police can use them. Why not have similar rules for facial recognition?