Re: "SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY" -- It's What We're Becoming, As Homeland Security Meets Casino ID Tactics!

sounds better then a bullet to the head and thousands of people getting away
with it
"Obwon-Gandalf-Hope IV" <perryneheum@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1193084456.476172.215980@e34g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
> Did you know that Las Vegas gambling houses obtain and RETAIN personal
> information that tells them not just who you are, including name,
> address, and phone numbers -- but also how much money you wager, what
> games you play, how frequently you play, and whether you have a
> relative, friend, or belong to an organization that seeks to "game"
> the casino?
>
> They do, and much more, that, as they say, "stays in Las Vegas."
>
> It's part of an expanding security-sharing system that brings federal
> government surveillance techniques and technology and casino-based
> spying practices together.  And the association of the two monolithic
> entities is slowly transforming the U.S. information landscape into
> one that could bring an end to personal privacy as we've known it.
>
> Cause for concern?
>
> ------------------
> "From Casinos to Counterterrorism"
>
> "Las Vegas Surveillance, U.S. Security Efforts Involve Similar
> Tactics"
>
> By Ellen Nakashima
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Monday, October 22, 2007; A01
>
>
>
> LAS VEGAS -- This city, famous for being America's playground, has
> also become its security lab. Like nowhere else in the United States,
> Las Vegas has embraced the twin trends of data mining and high-tech
> surveillance, with arguably more cameras per square foot than any
> airport or sports arena in the country. Even the city's cabs and
> monorail have cameras. As the U.S. government ramps up its efforts to
> forestall terrorist attacks, some privacy advocates view the city as a
> harbinger of things to come.
>
> In secret rooms in casinos across Las Vegas, surveillance specialists
> are busy analyzing information about players and employees. Relying on
> thousands of cameras in nearly every cranny of the casinos, they
> evaluate suspicious behavior. They ping names against databases that
> share information with other casinos, sometimes using facial-
> recognition software to validate a match. And in the marketing suites,
> casino staffers track players' every wager, every win or loss, the
> better to target high-rollers for special treatment and low- and
> middle-rollers for promotions.
>
> "You could almost look at Vegas as the incubator of a whole host of
> surveillance technologies," said James X. Dempsey, policy director for
> the Center for Democracy and Technology. Those technologies, he said,
> have spread to other commercial venues: malls, stadiums, amusement
> parks.
>
> And although that is "problematic," he said, "the spread of the
> techniques to counterterrorism is doubly worrisome. Finding a
> terrorist is much harder than finding a card counter, and the
> consequences of being wrongly labeled a terrorist are much more severe
> than being excluded from a casino."
>
> Eyes in the Sky
>
> The casino industry, like the national security industry, is seeking
> information to answer a fundamental question: Who are you?
>
> "It's, are you a good guy or a bad guy? A threat or a non-threat?"
> explained Derk Boss, the vice president for surveillance for the
> Stratosphere hotel and casino, whose crew operates under what he calls
> the IOU system: Identify, Observe and Understand.
>
> "There are going to be people that just want to come and gamble and
> enjoy your services," he said. "And there are going to be people that
> are going to come to take your money. Our job is to distinguish
> between those two groups."
>
> In the surveillance room, 50 monitors are linked to 2,000 cameras,
> from the casino entrance to the tower observation deck. Two employees
> keep an eye on the monitors. Guests are on camera from the moment they
> enter -- except in their rooms and in bathrooms. An investigator
> tracking a suspect could go back and review old tape, assembling a
> mosaic of a visitor's moves for the past two weeks.
>
> What happens in Vegas does indeed stay in Vegas -- for a lot longer
> than most patrons realize.
>
> On a recent Friday night, the surveillance team at the Stratosphere is
> watching a casino host they suspect of handing out unwarranted
> "comps," or vouchers for free rooms and meals to guests. Might he be
> taking kickbacks?
>
> Down on the floor, the pit boss is observing players, looking for
> "tells" -- behavioral signs of cheaters or other undesirables. The
> night before, investigators identified a blackjack player as a card
> counter. Casinos dislike card counters because they can determine when
> the cards are to their advantage and raise their bets accordingly.
> When the pit boss told the card counter he could bet only the minimum
> amount, he cashed in his chips and left.
>
> While casinos have been monitoring suspicious behavior for years, the
> Department of Homeland Security is just now deploying specially
> trained officers to look for behavioral clues and facial expressions.
>
> Casinos have tried to use facial-recognition software to identify
> known cheats in real time, but with little success. Casino lighting is
> often dim, and a player who wants to conceal his identity can hide
> behind a hat, sunglasses or a false beard.
>
> But in a few years, some say, iris-scan technology will be mature
> enough to use in gaming. Casinos might ask people to sit for a scan of
> the iris, which, like a fingerprint, has a unique pattern. That
> pattern would be transformed into a template to be matched against a
> database.
>
> After Sept. 11, 2001, several airports tested facial-recognition
> software, with little success. But the government is continuing to
> invest in biometric technologies, and the military already uses iris
> scans on suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
>
> Following the Links
>
> On occasion, national security and casino security interests directly
> intersect. Jeff Jonas discovered that after he developed a computer
> program for the casino industry that helps detect cheats using
> aliases.
>
> A 43-year-old technology visionary and high-school dropout, Jonas soon
> realized that his system could also identify employees colluding with
> gamblers, say, by discovering that they share a home address. He calls
> his program NORA -- for Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness.
>
> Every time a player registers for a loyalty card or a hotel room,
> Jonas explained from his lab near the Strip, the player's name,
> address and other data are sent to NORA. Also in the casinos' NORA
> database is information about employees and vendors.
>
> NORA can spot links that a casino employee probably would never
> discover, such as a phone number shared by two different names, Jonas
> said. It once identified a casino promotions director who picked a
> winning ticket that belonged to her sister, he said.
>
> The idea was so powerful that the CIA's private investment arm, In-Q-
> Tel, poured more than $1 million into NORA to help root out corruption
> in federal agencies. Then, after the Sept. 11 attacks, it became clear
> that link analysis could be useful in tracking terrorist networks.
>
> In 2002, Jonas shared his technology with Pentagon officials, who were
> researching a more controversial technique called pattern-based data
> mining. Their aim was to identify terror networks from patterns of
> behavior, by plowing through vast beds of data such as hotel, flight
> and rental-car reservations. Jonas, now an IBM chief scientist, said
> narrowly focused link analysis is less invasive because it starts with
> a known suspect rather than casting about in the general population.
>
> At the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, for
> example, investigators have used link analysis to track money
> laundering. From one Suspicious Activity Report -- which financial
> institutions are required to send to the government -- they have
> identified a money launderer's partners in crime. FinCEN has a
> decade's worth of data on 170 million report forms. "We find a
> tremendous amount of connectivity," said Steve Hudak, FinCEN
> spokesman. "We find suspects linked by addresses, suspects linked by
> phone numbers. So we definitely know that these people are operating
> together."
>
> But privacy advocates warn that the farther it moves from the suspect,
> the more likely link analysis is to snare innocent people.
>
> Chips Tracking Chips
>
> Rolland Steil moves a stack of 34 casino chips across the felt of a
> baccarat table. On a monitor linked to the table in this desert
> laboratory, 34 numbers pop up. Each chip is embedded with a radio
> frequency identification (RFID) chip that enables the casino to track
> how much money is being wagered on this roulette number or that
> baccarat spot.
>
> Steil, a product manager for Progressive Gaming International, which
> developed the chips, expects all casinos to use RFID-enabled chips
> soon -- to detect counterfeiters, to keep track of chip flow at
> tables, to know instantly how much a player has bet, won or lost.
>
> "We're providing so much data to the casinos, they're drooling for
> it," he said.
>
> In the outside world, counterterrorism and Homeland Security officials
> are looking for ways RFID technology can help them, too. RFID chips
> are in new passports, EZPasses, credit cards and building passes. Soon
> they might be in clothing.
>
> All this electronic data is trackable, as are text messages sent from
> cellphones or instant messages from laptops. Following the trail could
> uncover a terrorist network.
>
> Or an innocent group of, say, bird-watchers.
>
> "We often hear of the surveillance technology du jour, but what we're
> seeing now in America is a collection of surveillance technologies
> that work together," said Barry Steinhardt, the American Civil
> Liberties Union's technology and liberty project director. "It isn't
> just video surveillance or face recognition or license plate readers
> or RFID chips. It's that all these technologies are converging to
> create a surveillance society."
>
> 'We Know Who You Are'
>
> Under the elegant chandeliers at Caesars Palace, 10,000 people a day
> willingly give up personal information -- name, address, birthday --
> and allow their gambling habits to be tracked so they can win free
> hotel rooms and show tickets. In nearly a decade, 40 million have
> signed up for Harrah's Total Rewards loyalty card.
>
> Harrah's Entertainment, owner of Ceasars Palace and the industry
> leader in data mining for marketing, can then customize the gambler's
> experience. A guest celebrating her birthday might insert her card in
> a slot machine and be surprised by a promotions manager bearing a
> birthday card and a cookie.
>
> "It's really about, how do we convince these people to be more loyal
> and give them a sense of 'We know who you are,' " said David W.
> Norton, senior vice president at Harrah's.
>
> Guests may or may not see that as a good thing.
>
> In December 2003, faced with a warning that terrorists were about to
> attack Las Vegas, the FBI asked hotels, rental-car agencies and
> airlines for customer data. Some balked, but others produced the data,
> sometimes voluntarily, sometimes when presented with a subpoena.
>
> The data sweep turned up no leads. One gambler who was there at the
> time said he approved of the tactic. "The only people who have
> anything to worry about are the people who have something to hide,"
> said Dale Weinstein, a Los Angeles media market consultant sitting at
> a Caesar's Palace slot machine where he had just won a $2,000 jackpot.
>
> But for David Richardson, a real estate inspector from in Upstate New
> York, the data gathering crossed a line. "They have no right to get in
> your shorts," he said, strolling between casinos. "It's all about
> gathering personal information, which I'm not so crazy about the
> government knowing. It's none of their business."
>
> Below the Radar
>
> Despite all the high-tech gizmos, some casino targets still slip
> through.
>
> On a Sunday afternoon, Mike Aponte slides onto a stool at a blackjack
> table in a medium-size casino on the Strip and lays $300 on the felt.
> Aponte draws little notice in a town filled with droves of other Asian
> gamblers.
>
> Both the dealer and floor manager urge him to sign up for a player's
> card. He demurs. Within 15 minutes, he's up by $700.
>
> At one point, Aponte has a 12, with the dealer showing a 3. Basic
> strategy dictates that Aponte should take another card. But he has
> been counting and knows mostly high cards are left, so he has a good
> chance of busting. He stands, the dealer busts and he wins the hand.
>
> An hour and 15 minutes later, Aponte cashes in, $500 richer.
>
> No one realizes it at this casino, but Aponte is a veteran of the card-
> counting team of math whizzes from the Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology. The team reportedly took more than $10 million from
> casinos in its heyday from 1994 to 2000.
>
> Aponte has been barred from more than 100 casinos in the United States
> and a few overseas. In St. Kitts, he said, he was recognized by a
> Biometrica database, and now he avoids the biggest, most modern
> casinos.
>
> The team's No. 1 downfall, he said, was information sharing. Once the
> members' faces began showing up in databases, their days were
> numbered.
>
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/21/AR2007102101522.html
>
[ Auf dieses Posting antworten ]
Antworten

Poster (23.10.2007 13:26)