My question is. Even after all this nonsense, why did it take several hours of questioning before releasing the man with the camera?
Will this cause anyone to critically examine the actions of the passenger, the flight crew, and JTTF?
Likely not.
Because once person A points a finger in the direction of person B, everyone's incentive is to make sure they are not the one who allowed the "terrorist" to go free.
Easily avoidable false positives like this are security failures. They slowly erode trust instead of allowing a literal big bang demonstration of the failure and therefore they are insidious.