That is extremely frightening coming from an administration that is increasingly using violent and elimitionist language to levy completely made up charges at immigrants, LGBT, and particularly political opponents.
BTW, as I expand upon below, I'm against surveillance of private communications, I think we all are. As far as I understand it, this is not surveillance, this is identification technology, which is different.
So I think the perception goes both ways.
[1] During the colonial era, the bigger problem was the risk of white settlers emigrating to a nearby American Indian community. For example, it's likely that the entire colony of Roanoke did this. Even as late as the 19th century, white children captured and raised by the Comanche almost exclusively chose to continue living as Comanche even after being given the chance to return.
If it were only warm-blooded individual humans identifying you, there wouldn't be much potential for abuse. In the 1960s, your privacy was pretty much preserved even in public spaces. Unless you were a genuine person of interest, worthy of expending costly observational resources.
Now? Drive anywhere, walk anywhere - machines log your travels. It's a perfect recipe for abuse. Just scale, is all it takes.
Then TV, music videos and the practice of having huge screens broadcasting the faces of the band to the audience ruined that.
KISS used face paint and that helped protect their identity, but when they got too big, you saw Gene Simmons wearing a mask on dates to try to preserve his privacy, yet everyone knew the masked guy was Gene Simmons.
I believe it does in some places, for example France.
Rules on the sort of thing are not universal. Europe collectively (continent not union) cares a bit less about freedom of speech, quite a bit more about privacy, compared to the USA.
[0] Amazon recruiter emails that coworkers and I have gotten from Amazon. These emails had a very heavy implication that that particular group was using the facial recognition tech for this purpose.
I'm interested in how you would define systematic abuse vs. just plain abuse.
Police forces have adopted new technology for many decades now (e.g. radio, high-speed police cars, helicopters with search lights, RDBMSs, body armor, DNA sampling and matching, speed measuring radar, tasers ...) and, while it is probably true that all of these technologies have been abused by the police at times, can we also say that they have been "systematically abused?" What does that mean?
Up to a point you can choose not to patronize such places, but where do we draw the line? I'm curious as to any legal arguments other than "You don't have a right to privacy in public." You can't opt out of society.