The EU heavily regulates this specifically in the, here infamous, "AI regulations" .

Though GDPR would also ban this probably.

1984 was written in 1949, that feels like a reasonable prediction of Flock a lot longer than 20 years ago

The history of human civilization is quite telling, no?

More like 30 years ago when I got my first webcam and have been deeply considering today's exact scenario, along with many alternatives ever since.

Had nothing to do with any regulations though, actually didn't want to give anybody any ideas either way.

There were so many better things to do back then, and now even more variety of opportunities although not every "ecosystem" turns out to be a net positive if you're not careful.

The GDPR is far from perfect, but it does cover this. It talks about acquiring and storing information that can be used to identify people. It doesn't specify what counts, so now that face recognition is pretty, it automatically applies to images.

It also talks about uses cases where such things are allowed to be recorded, and forbids all others.

> IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation.

Hard disagree. If such a network is created, foreign adversaries (or domestic ones that don't abide by the laws) can hack them. Has happened quite a number of times.

We can absolutely say that, for instance, taking pictures in public is legal but surveilling is not. We could say that recording public spaces systematically, for the purposes of surveillance, is not permitted. That does not require us to say that individuals cannot record in a public place. We can even say that individuals or companies are not allowed to collude to effectively turn individual recordings into systematic public surveillance (e.g. you can't build a product that searches everyone's personal videos of spaces and turns them into a spotty surveillance network).

> How would you specify this regulation?

I'd regulate the database side of things.

What makes mass surveillance systems such as Flock, Ring, etc., incredibly objectionable isn't really the cameras. It's the databases they feed into that allow for the unprecedented invasion into our daily lives. That's also true for non-camera surveillance systems. The concentration and correlation of individually innocuous information adds up to an egregious assault on us all. That's the part that needs heavy restriction and regulation.