Microsoft and Amazon stating that they will not allow their facial recognition technology to be used by the police makes me wonder if the tech world wants arsonists and looters to be caught.
Your stance seems to be a common one when new laws and technology are proposed for the stated purpose of fighting crime, as if new thing is analogous to a silver bullet; without it they're essentially powerless, and arguing against is cast as arguing on the side of criminality.
In the specific example of facial recognition, what amused me since the pandemic started gaining pace, is that face masks render facial recognition far less useful than in the few days / weeks prior. So, whilst it may appear that Microsoft and Amazon are 'listening the people's privacy concerns', it might just be that there's so little to gain from it right now, due to the prevalence and increasing social acceptability of face masks, that the social credit they get for abandoning or delaying it is worth more than the potential contracts and social shaming they'd get for continuing to pursue it.
Arsonists and looters have been caught and prosecuted without the use of facial recognition.
On "beneficial": the panopticon would be beneficial in both cases. In a vacuum.