I recall a French law restricting photographing people in public without permission. I saw it on a photography forum, not sure if it was accurate.

This [1] claims that street photography in general is allowed. As with some other jurisdictions in Europe, you're often not allowed to publish the photos anywhere. Obviously in today's world, that's a law that is pretty much broken continuously.

[1] https://law.photography/law/street-photography-laws-in-franc...

And his way of getting back at them is to publish an entire theory framework of surveillance asymmetry, gets widely cited, purely so that he could use McDonalds as the punchline[0]

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/McVeillance

Sorry, I'm with them on this...

I don't want some guy recording me when I eat in a restaurant. In France, they want that even less.

I'd prefer McDonalds itself didn't have cameras either. But at least those are for anti-theft purposes.

Sure, I understand 100%, but they didn't have to beat the guy and break his gear, security tried to remove his gear by force...