Wouldn't it be more likely that they say "ok, we can interview/investigate/whatever X number of people" and then they adjust the threshold to produce that number? If 80% gives them 10,000 hits and 99% gives them one or none, then nobody is going to just go with either setting.
I'd guess with the potato quality of facial pictures from incidents security or phone cameras, you might want lower confidence matches to get outcomes out of lousy pictures.
If the default is 80, most will be 80. The SE may say “I’m told to inform you that you should use 99.”, but I’m sure he is winking.