Yeah, Australia's conservative side of politics (arguably both sides are conservative in this regard) have, at various times, tried to make protesting itself illegal.
I like the irony of it, and doubt that "real" protesters give much of a fuck what kinds of boundaries the protested try to put around protesting.
These kinds of things are just another data point documenting "the general decline".
One tool would be methods to blind said facial recognition vans. Cameras are relatively easily "blinded".