From Casinos to Counterterrorism

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.

The casino industry, like the national security industry, is seeking information to answer a fundamental question: Who are you?

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.

I’m surprised that few people see the glaring difference between Vegas, and Big Brother-nanny state surveillance.

The motivation. What Vegas does is less surveillance than “observation”. Their entire motivation is money. Their scrutiny is indifferent to anything else. Morality is not involved. Neither is social control or manipulation of people. They don’t want to be ripped off. If you don’t try to steal from them, they don’t care. A very honest and simple motivation.

Now compare that to the motivations of the Big Brother-nanny state.

Their #1 motivation is the control of people. Secondarily is to make life easier for themselves with the illusion that a million cameras are just as good as a million policemen. Third is using their cameras to tax people and to save money by *firing* policemen.

The Big Brother-nanny state is obsessed with the minutiae of people’s lives. It cares deeply about their morality, and keeping dossiers of their behavior and their sins. It compiles huge databases of every petty aspect of their lives.

So what is the practical difference between Vegas and the Big Brother-nanny state?

What Vegas does, works. They pay the big bucks to security people to constantly monitor the even bigger bucks moving around their casinos. Crime is put down. Scoundrels, scam artists, grifters, thieves and con artists are quickly caught and locked up, because they are bad for business. Government involvement only begins when they get a call from a casino. Otherwise, it’s not their business.

Now compare that with the Big Brother-nanny state.

When a government, large or small, starts putting up cameras, it is a good indicator that something is wrong with them. It is an admission that they are inefficient, that they can’t do their job, that they are incompetent and lazy. They are looking for an easy way to do a hard job, and they are wasting their budget money.

Cameras for them are not about “observation”, they are truly about surveillance. They are admitting that they cannot *deal* with the big issues facing the public, so they are withdrawing, paying attention to minutiae, looking at trees with a microscope instead of watching the forest.

And it shows. Instead of cameras reducing crime, crime goes up, because there are neither policemen on the street nor are there policemen watching the cameras, because the work is deathly dull and not worth minimum wage. Instead of cameras reducing car accidents, while they do bring in a lot of new tax money, they often *cause* more accidents then they stop.

But even that new tax money is quickly spent on other intrusive and idiotic things. But it is all for naught. Everything that the new technology was supposed to deliver is just wasted, because the bottom line is still there—that the government is incapable and incompetent. Even if everything they wanted was delivered to them on a silver platter, they would still squander and misuse it.

The bottom line is that for all the intentions to make Big Brother as menacing and powerful looking as possible, he is little more than a frivolous J.R. “Bob” Dobbs. A wastrel, a fop, a lewd degenerate and a slacker.

And all the cameras in the world won’t change that fact.

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