[throwitaway222]

Has anyone else felt lately that like in the 80s and 90s things were what they appeared to be? A bar was a bar. A church is a church. A museum is a museum. A hospital is a hospital.

Now I can't help but think of all the nefarious owners - maybe it's some non-profit in Isreal, or has funding from China, or is run by the Russian mafia. Nothing seems to be genuine anymore, and every now and then there's some giant scandal that proves it all right. What's left of America. And everyone's asking for more privacy, but I fear the nefarious owner class that has allegiance to some other country is also asking for more privacy.

[Bender]

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.

[throwitaway222]

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.

[Bender]

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.

[JuniperMesos]

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.

[toader]

"Most"? Recorded how? Persistent surveillance? I don't buy it.

[tracker1]

Beyond that are the payment systems and tracking that they have... Point of Sale hardware/software has always been tracking, especially if you regularly use credit/debit cards... your name and Zip+4 is pretty damned accurate for correlated data (aside from jr/sr scenarios, worse).

They share, collaborate and collude and it all strips away your rights. Similar for so many large merchants and the alternative is to pay 10-20% more (or more) for smaller shops. That said, Amazon has gotten so bad with opportunistic pricing that they're sometimes more expensive than the alternatives anyway.

[watwut]

One data point is that Stonewall where pride started in 1969 was run by mafia. I do not think it is safe to assume that mafias stopped owning bars in 10 years. Especially considering violent crime peaked in early 90ties.