You have no right to privacy in public. If you make this illegal private companies will do it instead, and the first amendment makes that impossible to stop.
The cynic might retort that such laws are perpetually vulnerable to subversion under the guise of national security. While there's a kernel of truth in that, it's equally undeniable that if 80% of the citizenry truly felt impassioned, any rogue elements within the government would face severe repercussions. Acts of retribution against such actors would not only be tolerated but perhaps even tacitly endorsed by the public.
If we could reliably attain passion, cooperation, consciousness? And ultimately, a belief in agency?
Then we would hardly even need to protect institutions against such subversion.
I think it takes both agreement and desperation for that kind of thing to happen, though. Comfortable people don't tend to buck the people who can freeze their bank accounts in any serious way at simultaneous scale, even when they're in mass disagreement.
I've always personally envisioned some terrible end-state of human history where vast swathes of people are in something more like a zoo than a prison. Without escape, but also without enough pain to push them toward resistance, until it's too late to turn back.
Heck, I want an aid like that - my built-in wetware face recognition is barely functional (I don't even recognize actors in the movies, save for a few most iconic ones), and tying faces only works after repeating it a dozen times. I can pinky swear I won't be sharing this with anyone. I probably won't even keep records, because it's literal digital junk (but I'd like to have a right to record everything that happened around me that I could've possibly remembered naturally). But that's not about it - I just hate how mass surveillance made a lot of people hate all the cameras without making any distinctions (sure, I think I get it).
What this is about is that while individual privacy in public is not expected (save for stalking or other forms of harassment, which aren't exactly about privacy anymore), privacy at scale is an open question. Large entities, like governments or big companies, can collect unprecedented amounts of data, and at that scale it holds a significant potential both for good use and for abuse. So, in a functional democracy, it must prompt a public discussion and search for a consensus. It can be argued that there are benefits, and whenever benefits outweigh the risks, and it also can be argued that old principles must be still upheld to the letter, or if reality had changed too much and those principles are not matching to the ideas and reasons...
It especially matters when it's about the government, because government abuse can get really nasty, even deadly. That's why all the safeguards, checks and balances.
Basically, I think it's not really about cameras, it's about ability to build large databases with information that may be, uh, socially sensitive.
How so?
Preventing facial recognition misuse (or use even). How is that impinging on the freedoms guaranteed in the First Ammendment?
On a slightly different note, why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term?
> why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term?
The current jurisprudence is a pathlogical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_case) interpretation that clamps the solution space to maximal commercial/corporate rights at the expense of individual rights.
The example of the press is actually quite poignant. The current legal regime neuters the free speech rights of most of the press. People can be fired for writing articles saying things their employer does not want to be said. They can even be fired for saying things in their own personal time that their employer does not want to be said! The end result is greatly diminished rights for the individuals making up the press, in order to support greatly increased rights for the controlling owners of the press.
Maybe we shouldn't treat corporate speech the same as human speech under the 1st amendment, but that would allow regulation of corporations giving money to political organizations? Ok, well that's beyond the pale. That's obviously originally the founders intent in writing the bill of rights. I'm sure it's in the Federalist Papers somewhere.
Also, abridging corporate speech creates a precedent for abridging the speech of all human collective entities like religions, political parties, advocacy groups and the press, because there is no particular reason why corporations as an abstract entity created by humans to express collective human will should be unique in this regard.
You can't simply nullify rights when people exercise them in aggregate. That isn't how free societies are supposed to work, and it's too easy to undermine.
...corporations have thrown tons of money at making it so
Sure there is. If corporations (/LLCs) were prohibited from directing their humans to say specific things as part of their employment, those humans can still say whatever they want on their own time.
> Also, abridging corporate speech creates a precedent for abridging the speech of all human collective entities
It's disingenuous to pretend that a corporation (/LLC) is just some group of people. Rather it's an entity that has gone out of its way to obtain a government created liability shield. Conditioning that grant on following extra regulations aimed at mitigating the harm caused by the extreme scale fostered by the limited liability makes perfect sense.
> corporations as an abstract entity created by humans to express collective human will
Wut? The corporate mechanic is that of directing humans in a top-down fashion. The only people thinking corporations represent "collective human will" are the ownership and managerial classes who either are the people directing the corporation top-down, or at least have to repeat enough of the corporate kool-aid to get promoted. The majority of people view them as the least-worst option to receive a paycheck and often see their own wills suppressed - even though respecting that distributed intelligence would often help the corporation (ie "shit rolls downhill").
No they are not.
Legal fictions aside, it should be obvious
Then make it not so, we aren't forced to live with the status quo for eternity.
The law wouldn't be banning people recording faces. It would be much more specific: corporations can't record peoples faces at a mass scale to log them away and sell the data for a profit. If there's any edge cases to this, then let the courts handle it. We let the courts sort out grey areas already, that's their job.