Entries Tagged "casinos"

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Hinky at the Casino: JDLR

It’s called “Just Doesn’t Look Right“:

In the casino business, or any other, we tend to become complacent, and we stop paying attention to the little things. But a really sharp observer will still be shocked awake at some little unexplained thing: the five o’clock shadow on the woman sitting opposite the big-money player, or too many people watching that game, or the fellow who keeps looking directly at the cameras. The guy who looks as though he slept under an overpass carrying a new shopping bag from Nieman-Marcus, the two players on a table game whose arms were held against their chests, the bulge under that character’s jacket and the man wearing an overcoat on an August day in Las Vegas.

Posted on May 15, 2007 at 11:05 AM • View Comments

Top Terrorist Targets from the DHS

It’s a seriously dumb list:

A federal inspector general has analyzed the nation’s database of top terrorist targets. There are more than 77,000 of them—up from 160 a few years ago, before the entire exercise morphed into a congressional porkfest.

And on that list of national assets are … 1,305 casinos! No doubt Muckleshoot made the cut (along with every other casino in our state).

The list has 234 restaurants. I have no idea if Dick’s made it. The particulars are classified. But you have to figure it did.

Why? Because here’s more of what the inspector general found passes for “critical infrastructure.” An ice-cream parlor. A tackle shop. A flea market. An Amish popcorn factory.

Seven hundred mortuaries made the list. Terrorists know no limits if they’re planning attacks on our dead people.

The report says our state has a whopping 3,650 critical sites, sixth in the U.S. It didn’t identify them—remember, we wouldn’t want this list of eateries, zoos and golf courses to fall into the wrong hands.

That number, 3,650, is so high I’m positive we haven’t heard the most farcical of it yet.

What’s going on? Pork barrel funding, that’s what’s going on.

We’re never going to get security right if we continue to make it a parody of itself.

Posted on July 18, 2006 at 7:25 AM • View Comments

Instantaneous Data Grabbing

I think this is a harbinger of the future:

A high roller walks into the casino, ever so mindful of the constant surveillance cameras. Wanting to avoid sales pitches and other unwanted attention, he pays cash at each table and anonymously moves around frequently to discourage people who are trying to track his movements.

After a few hours of losses, he goes to the cashier and asks for a cash advance off of his credit card. The card tells the casino his name, but not much else. As is required by card issuers, the cashier asks for some other identification, such as a driver’s license. That license offers the casino a ton of CRM identification goodies, but the cashier is only supposed to glance at the picture and the name to verify identity and hand the license—and its info treasure trove—back to the gambler.

Not any more, at least if a Minneapolis company called Cash Systems Inc. has anything to say about it. The firm was recently awarded a U.S. patent for a device that can grab all of the data of almost any U.S. driver’s license in seconds and instantly dump it into a casino’s CRM system.

On the one hand, the technology isn’t very interesting; it’s probably just a camera and some OCR software optimized for driver’s licenses. But what is interesting is that the technology is available as a mass-market product.

Where else do you routinely show your ID? Who else might want all that information for marketing purposes?

Posted on November 7, 2005 at 7:45 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.