For what it's worth most gay bars, massage parlors and brothels near military installations have been recorded since the at least the 1970's. The purpose was to identify military personnel at risk of being compromised. None of that information was shared outside of the military.
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A) wow, that's crazy. B) So even then things were not purely what they seemed - those places became operations. But I guess the operations back then - monitoring for PEP "politically exposed people" by a single military base is way different than what Sayari does at scale for everyone everywhere and will pay money for feeds, incentivizing some giant surveillance network.
It's like the same answer to the question why did ads appear so quickly on the internet in the 90s. It's just that they found new ways to monetize seemingly random / normal everyday things.
by a single military base is way different than
Absolutely. I have no idea how that process has evolved over time. For all I know maybe they use Axiom/Flock to do this now but back in my day it was all closed circuit and heavily protected information. Even doing a records request on someone would not disclose this information as their sole purpose was to identify national security risks.
Also even before that, many queer bars were owned by institutions like ethnic mafias - it's pretty well known that the famous Stonewall Inn was owned by members of the Italian mafia in the New York City area.
There were lots of institutions decades ago that were not what they presented themselves publicly as being, in one form or another; the difference was that the alternative media outlets that would have allowed interested people to disseminate this information widely were less developed than they are today.
"Most"? Recorded how? Persistent surveillance? I don't buy it.