Nah. Street View was also a big hubbub back then. People are not even mentioning it anymore.
>Things that feel illegal will probably become illegal someday
Also, if you think about this phrasing for just a second, this is the chilling effect. Suppressing expression due to the anticipation of negative outcomes.
Some was mitigated, but I don't think that faces and plates were what had the biggest bang about it. It's a complete, 360 capture of a large part of public places, with people still being clearly identifiable, correlated with satellite imagery (which was pointed out as creepy and privacy-invading as well, upon its public release), resolution so high that you can read many texts, and you can still see in windows, into yards, all kinds of stuff. Wikipedia has a lengthy article about the different concerns. And yet, despite it feeling creepy and strange for many, it just became normal. People look up random places for fun, to hunt for their new home, for driving instructions, GeoGuessr is cool and has a league of its own... it's a creepy, risky new thing becoming part of life, that's why I brought it up.
Smartphones could be another good example. As the joke goes, people in the 60s are afraid the government wiretaps their phones. Nowadays, they say: "Hey wiretap! Do you have a recipe for pancakes?"
All the hate tech journalists gave the EU because Apple Intelligence isn't launched there was insane, yet this is what EU legislation is designed to avoid.
I didn't know that nestle and shell had AI departments.
Look, I'm not +1 the EU here, but having some level of legal protection against marauding corporations is good. Sure EU based companies are evil, but they can't be as abusive to normal people because they are constrained by a semi-functional legal system.
The US used to have that as well, along with a functioning legislature.
They do not. I can't even begin to explain to you how delusional this is.
To be clear, I gave testimony to the NTHSA that the first Porsche Taycan was unfit for road driving due to extreme errors in the software architecture and in part got the CEO of Porsche fired. (Specifically error handling so laughably bad it caused the entire car to lock up at speed.)
The EU only FOLLOWED grudgingly after the US demanded the recall. I am extremely aware of EXACTLY how risk-taking European companies are.
Probably not for four years, at least