Caesars Palace security intimidates DEF CON goers, seize soldering irons | Hacker News Reader

Caesars Palace security intimidates DEF CON goers, seize soldering irons

arstechnica.com

44 pointsassafs8 comments

I don't think this is about the soldering irons per se but rather about the trespass. Misleading title.

Tweets referenced in the article:

"Current status: two members of hotel security banging on my door after I asked to go into my room and verify them with hotel security. I'm on speaker phone with hotel security, asking for a supervisor to come verify. I'm terrified. What the hell is this @CaesarsPalace #DEFCON"

https://twitter.com/k8em0/status/1028375035285630976?s=20

"This evening, a man in a light blue collared shirt with a walkie talkie, entered my room with a key without knocking while I was getting dressed. He left when I started screaming. @CaesarsPalace is investigating whether it was a hotel employee. @defcon has also been alerted."

https://twitter.com/maddiestone/status/1028498769732460544?s...

A commenter on Ars put it pretty well:

> They are sort of lucky nobody apparently called the police. I would have called the police and started recording.

For the (contradictory) responses from Caesar's and DEFCON, scroll to the bottom of the article.

Keep in mind that among DEFCON attendees there are a lot of paranoids.

I was present, saw a lot of what happened, talked to a lot of Goons about it and there was a lot of misinformation and exaggeration floating around.

Some of the highest profile comments on twitter about this are people acting like they were specifically targeted, which is almost surely not the case. Some of them, for some reason, felt very unsafe. This is also likely untrue. A luxury hotel/resort in a purely-tourism city is one of the safest places you can be, despite recent events.

seizing soldering irons, while they say searches "involve only a visual review of the bedroom, bathroom and additional seating area, if any

I hope some attendees hit them with a good lawsuit for violating their privacy.

They say they have a multiyear contract with Caesar's but the facility is under construction next year.

It seems like there might be a case for claiming breach and getting out of that contract. And for PR reasons it might be worth it for DefCon to persue that option.

DEFCON doesn't want to get out of their contract. They negotiated a sweetheart deal with Caesar's -- long term and at a great rate -- when Caesar's was on the verge of bankruptcy.

From https://marcrogers.org/2018/08/13/open-letter-to-the-hacker-... (linked in the article):

"Yes hotel staff NEED to check rooms but if we, who can change the very building blocks of life, can’t come up with a safer way to do this then we really aren’t trying hard enough."

No, they don't. They have thousands of security cameras set up, and I'd be shocked if they didn't have technologies like facial recognition built in. They have the ability to do a background check on every guest who checks in. They also have people working the front desk who likely get training to see if you're a "bad guy" or not.

So with all that, please explain why this additional search, which is a massive violation of privacy (and apparently the Constitution) is necessary?

I'm not advocating for room searches or intrusion of privacy, but the fact of the matter is all of those cameras and security personnel still weren't enough to detect the worst mass shooter in history. I don't have a better solution unfortunately, and I think these room searches are a complete invasion of privacy, but my point is that the evidence contradicts you.

The room searches are an invasion of privacy with zero merit. How likely is it that a shooter is going to leave guns laying out in the open?

Unless they are willing to toss the entire room like a prison cell, these searches are worse than useless as they provide a false sense of security at great cost.

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