The German law has existed at least as long as whatever face tracking software was state-of-the-art on AMIGA 500.

With a fully automated system it’s much easier to track someone’s movements than it is if you had people watching cameras. The spread of facial recognition software is a differentiator worth pointing out.

It seems most of these weren't passed until after 2010, whereas CCTV was widespread since at least the 80's.

Off the shelf CCTV is beyond terrible for most purposes concordant with this conspiracy theory.

In a jurisdiction I know police always come to unrest etc with a van equipped with HR cameras. Those are then manually sifted post event to identify persons

Isn't CCTV bad at identifying faces though?

CCTV just means the video feed is not broadcast publicly. Cameras can be as good as you're willing to pay.