Because it's not a single entity following you around from place to place. Each place is keeping it's own records.

If you go to Joe's house and Joe makes a note that you came to his house, then you go to Bob's house and Bob makes a note that you came to his house, nobody is stalking you. Each individual is keeping track of who visits them. That is not stalking.

Yes, maybe later on, the government or someone else could come along and ask to see each person's records of who visited them. But that is their information to share or not share. You went to their place! If someone comes into your place of business or residence, does the record of that person visiting you not belong at least partially to you? Are you not allowed to keep track of who enters your own property?

I think I see where you're coming from, in that you're allowed to have knowledge of other people, and most of the time it's perfectly innocuous. But I don't think that's a very fair comparison. There's a pretty big difference between just happening upon some information (that you would likely immediately forget because it's not important), and actively seeking out and extracting information, often combining it with more information from different sources, saving it to a "profile" associated with you, and often sharing it with third parties, all without your knowledge or consent.

You seem to be implying that there's no difference between having a single piece of harmless information about someone, and having lots of personal and/or intimate knowledge of them, especially if they aren't the ones having given it to you, and even more so if you're strangers.

Courts, laws, judges look at the end game. They often do not care about hand waving, distracting red-herring type logic.

This is how you get torrent sites taken down, even though they host absolutely nothing. Intent, you see, is key.

And what is the intent of all of this data collection? Is it to just randomly, happen-stance note someone in passing?

Or is it a dedicated, planned, targeted collection of data on individuals?

What is the purpose of the data collection? Hmm?

This is what counts.

Right, and the end game is some utterly mundane non-issue like showing me ads that I end up blocking or finding the best spot in the store to put cans of soup.

That's where all this hyperbolic "OMG they took my picture and now they have total control of my life!!1!1" hand-wringing falls flat.

I care about privacy too, but come on. It's not voodoo. If you're not going to be serious about the real risks it's hard to take seriously.

After all this discussion, I've yet to hear an explanation of the actual mechanism by which, say, Macy's having a picture of me in their store allows them to exert control over any action I might want to take.