I think the argument is that what you do in public places is public knowledge. If random people legally positioned can see you, then there is no assumption of privacy.

I speak from a position of no formal knowledge, merely having derived a working model that seems mostly to predict accurately various things. It's a working theory, not based on actual law. It's also probably got flaws, but I don't really care - I provide this working model merely as a starting point.

And regarding the rich being able to circumvent the law, it was ever thus. These days you need vast amounts of money to get into power, and once there, it's unlikely the laws will make life difficult for the rich and powerful.