> if there are photos of you on the internet, then you may well be [in the database]. And you are very unlikely to have been asked if that's OK
The cat is out of the bag with these technologies. If not already, it's only a matter of time before highly compressed face-feature databases are out in the wild and a score of apps appear to ID total strangers with a click.
That will change social dynamics, mostly for the worse I think, though it will allay some casual street crime and abuse much as in a society where people carry arms. Dog shits on your lawn? Send it back to the owners house.
It will also make face-covering in some public places far more acceptable and understandable, as the pandemic has already paved the way for.
What this law does though, and why it's not pointlessly fighting a tide, is that it prevents "facing" someone being socially normative.
If we can't uninvent abusive technologies we can at least make using them unacceptable. The powerful, including people like undercover cops and agents, will soon demand legal means to remove themselves - and that will open the door further for broader "right to be forgotten" type instruments. So I am also looking forward to Californian style laws in Europe that allow me to personally take down data in actions against companies outside my locality who do not have permission to store my likeness or data derived from it.