The other obvious question is, did the people who "cyberattack" them do so from _inside_ their own hotel? Is there some reason to think simple visual room inspections are going to help prevent their networks from being attacked?
None of these are logical responses to the stated problems. They're just ways to reduce privacy with a very thin corporate liability excuse tacked onto the end of it. I don't trust that they can people safe, and I don't trust their motivations in deploying these "techniques."
I'd rather sleep in the tunnels with the homeless at this point.
He claims they implemented policies in 2015 to enter and inspect all rooms after more than 12 hours of DnD. In other interviews he admits they "profile" everyone that enters their hotel.
https://nypost.com/2017/10/08/vegas-shooting-wouldnt-have-ha...
Eh, I guess I'd trip flags there. I typically put up the DnD on checking in at a hotel and leave it up until I check out. It's not a principled stance or anything, I'm just never staying for an amount of time (i.e. more than a week) where I'd need housekeeping services so figure I can save the housekeeping staff some effort and save some water.
If they really have "more cameras than anywhere else" and if that even mattered, then its already covered.
It would be orders of magnitude cheaper to put cameras in every single room, with a big sign saying this camera turns on every 4 hours with a big red light, and then if you cover it up a physical presence will occur.
Instead they go with: SHOW ME ALL YOUR USB DRIVES. Same shit as covid, if you make it normal for "officials" to touch and make copies of everything all the time everywhere, then there is no such thing as crime anymore yay
Also I think the average hotel guest is completely fine with maids entering during the day when the room's unoccupied, but would not appreciate a camera in the bedroom, with or without a big sign and a big red light.
The objective is not “make sure nobody in Vegas has a gun” the objective is “prevent a mass casualty event like the previous one”
Obviously the “tool” makes a difference, otherwise the tool wouldn’t have been used.
I found an interview where he just mentions "devices" amongst other extreme security measures.
- "Devices" at every entrance that the public can't see
- 40 Plain clothed, armed, former Marines trained specifically for guarding US embassy's at each entrance.
- Seal team and CIA agents that form private counter terrorism that have direct communication with FBI etc.
Is it not possible to create new policies that are effective while not compromising the privacy of your guests?
If they are looking through everyone’s rooms I would hope they find this now as he took days to get all of the guns and ammo up to his suite. I am not law enforcement and can’t say for sure though. The US has done a lot worse in the name of terrorism (I believe this was a terrorist act).
If he leaves the guns in the cases it just looks like he has a lot of luggage. He had a huge suite. If it didn't look odd to them in the first place I can't imagine how it would in retrospect:
Hotel staff certainly wouldn't find that with room inspections; they'd just see three or four pieces of luggage, which shouldn't raise any eyebrows. Then when the shooter decides to get started, they take everything out of the cases and set things up.
Like... this isn't rocket science. The only kind of room inspection that would actually stop these kinds of attacks would be if they do room searches, including opening and going through people's luggage. But I hope we can all agree that would be a huge invasion of privacy that no one should accept.
Of, course the actual way to stop -- or at least drastically reduce -- these sorts of attacks would be much stronger gun, ammo, and accessory controls. But of course the mouth-breathing 2A crowd (including most of SCOTUS) think guns are more important than people's lives.
For instance, he had bell desk bring 22 large suitcases to his room over a few days. That's a huge red flag that would not go unnoticed now (and there's likely some procedure about logging/reporting since then). Prior to that event, nobody logged or even paid attention to such things. When you work with whales in Vegas, you just get used to eccentric rich people being eccentric rich people. Now you're at least aware of threats from people posing as them.
I expect privacy in any home where I live, whether it's for a decade or for a day.
When the door closes, it's "my personal space" for the duration I paid for.
Of course, now Vegas begs to differ.
And they can’t come do inspections day after day.
In the UK. The law requires notice.
Yes, a property you rent is your home. It's not your property, though.
The safe is there because they acknowledge that quite a few people have access to the room and they can't be 100% sure that all their employees are good people who wouldn't steal, even if they expect them not to. Not because they intend to send randos into your room at all hours of the day.
(And it's not clear how many employees have access to override the locks on the in-room safes... I've always thought of those safes as borderline security theater.)
I wouldn't call a hotel stay "home" either, but I expect the privacy situation to be only slightly weaker than an apartment rental.
Hell, I own a unit in a condo building, and our building insurance requires annual inspections of the sprinklers and fire alarm horns. I know someone who owns a condo in another city, and the building does (required) quarterly spraying for cockroaches, and replacements of the air conditioning filters. None of us feel like we don't own these spaces.
Because it's part of the United States, where personal freedoms are supposedly respected. Reading so many comments describing daily room searches at hotels as just the new normal state of affairs makes me sick. I hadn't been aware that the terrorizing mass media had ruined hotels even harder than they ruined air travel.
Hotel rooms are a different matter, though. People should and do expect levels of privacy similar to that of a rented apartment. (Lower levels, but similar.)
The protocol for non-DefCon rooms:
* Housekeeping services the room.
* If housekeeping was unable to service the room, security will come take a look.
The protocol for DefCon rooms:
* Security comes and takes a look no matter what, and is, from reports, particularly invasive. E.g. asked to look for USB sticks as evidence of "hacking tools": https://x.com/d0rkph0enix/status/1822879409126162779
Housekeeping is neither trained nor spending time to performing a deep search of anyone’s room. But they do know what a pile of guns look like, and they’re instructed to escalate the situation to their superiors if they discover it.
* Housekeeping is optional, and not preferred. Housekeeping never shows up. * Security is never seen once on any floor above the ground level.
This has been my experience in Las Vegas in 5 different hotel rooms in the same hotel this year. These were 3 to 4 day stays. If the stay is longer than that then maybe a visit from security is more likely, but I didn't see them at all in the afternoons, evenings, mornings, any time. There was a security guard at the elevators on 1 day out of all the days I stayed.
The "protocol" probably depends on the hotel, where it's located, the events going on around Las Vegas at the time, and probably what the budget for security is.
The reports of mandatory security coming from "locals" and others in the comments here seem pretty wild to me, and far outside of what I've experienced in Las Vegas in the last year.
I expect privacy in any hotel room, regardless of where I am. Certainly not the same level of privacy I'd expect in my own home, whether purchased or rented. But daily security checks? No way, that's unreasonable. If I've put up the "do not disturb" sign, I expect no one to enter my room, at all, except in an emergency, or in a non-emergency where I'm present and have agreed to let someone in. That seems to me... entirely normal and reasonable to expect.
> there are more cameras and technology watching you here than anywhere else in the US
What does that have to do with it? Just because casinos want to watch what's going on to prevent cheating (or just too-good play), that doesn't mean the hotel-room privacy situation should go to shit.
My last few trips to Vegas I stayed in Airbnbs; I guess I will continue doing that for the foreseeable future when I visit.
While this is happening, the person on the inside can totally thwart the attack by just blocking the tool physically - it's hard enough to do this while you're not being interfered with.
The goal is then to establish identity, purpose, and ultimately deescalate. And then if need-be call the police and/or chargeback your credit card later.
Until otherwise verified, this intruder is no different than a random burglar breaking-and-entering in the middle of the night.
Yeah I can't imagine ever willingly going there (eg unless my work forces me to). It's a very curious choice for a community with so many privacy activists. The shooting excuse for the inspections is stupid. Anyone could walk in and set up in 10 minutes.
what motive would they have that is so important that they insist on spending money on low skill headcount to enter thousands of rooms per day?
honestly i'm struggling to sort out what scheme they're running that makes this headcount investment worthwhile.
95% of these rooms are being cleaned anyway by low-wage staff. The added 5% is such a small percentage.
But the shooting excuse is an excuse because they're not even liable for this. Any idiot can do the same from their private apartment. A mass shooter has no survival expectancy anyway. They can just rent a private flat and do it. Or they can just rent a room, bring their guns in and start shooting during the first day. It doesn't actually solve the problem at all. Only 24/7 video surveillance would do that which is obviously untenable in a hotel. Or strict gun controls which is why this isn't a problem in Europe but the US just can't get that into their heads.
The other reason I consider it an excuse is that in this case they are not causing hassle about firearms but about technical devices. Nothing to do with shootings at all. If the motive was purely looking for guns they wouldn't be harrassing unarmed defcon visitors.
I don't think they actually care about shootings but that it's dumb security theater to make customers feel safer which they probably see as a monetary benefit.
Knowing this now I definitely will refuse to visit Vegas even if my company tries to send me there on a business trip. Although to be fair I kinda have this policy already for the entire US because I'm not willing to give up my devices or my social media accounts to border patrol either.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/court-approves-800m-set...
> A court on Wednesday approved a settlement totaling $800 million from casino company MGM Resorts International and its insurers to more than 4,400 relatives and victims of the Las Vegas Strip shooting that was the deadliest in recent U.S. history.
The liability in this context is money leaving the business’s pocket due to performing or not performing X action, regardless of who the money goes to.
The motivation could merely be a desire to capriciously wield power over others. You see this in physical security careers from mall security up to actual law enforcement. Plenty of people get into these security-related roles simply for the ability to unaccountably bully and intimidate others, and will eagerly do so if given the chance, regardless of monetary cost or reward. I wouldn't be surprised if a hotel security apparatus were in favor of being allowed to enter rooms at will just because they want to.
I would go straight to the front desk, demand my money back for that day and then never stay with hotel again along with making sure the corporate office got a nice email about their bullshit policy.
Maybe over priced Vegas hotels can do this but any hotel I have ever stayed at needs to make the customer happy because the competition is so fierce. Most hotels will go out of their way to make sure you are happy. Not randomly inspect your room like you are a child.
Any longer than 7 days for inspecting and cleaning every room is asking for pest infestations, or worse.
As a hotel customer, I would not want to stay in one that does not a policy of frequent room inspections.
Mass shootings happen because the US has one of the most-armed citizenry in the developed world, and because we have ridiculously backward views about how easy it should be to put deadly weapons in the hands of anyone who wants one.
Daily room inspections are not going to stop any mass shooting where the shooter is aware of the inspections. The 2017 case was egregiously bad, certainly, with the shooter able to bring an insane amount of weaponry up to his room. But he could have been just as deadly with the contents of two or three regular-looking suitcases, something that wouldn't have raised any red flags during daily room inspections.
It's security theater, plain and simple.
Our government is currently trying to use the recent riots as an excuse for even more surveillance and censorship.
The arguments include "the rioters used social media". That is one reason its going to be easy to catch them. They themselves were posting photos and videos - self-surveillance.
It is very much what the media are doing: one local news website compared what happened in their town to Kristalnacht when what happened was 12 houses had windows broken and some cars were vandalised. Nasty, but hardly a fascist takeover.
On the other hand, the media do not balance it with equally wide reporting of things such as local builders doing free repairs on mosque in Southport, or the far larger crowds that turned out for counter protests.
Crime IS a normal occurrence. Riots will happen. You should not compromise human rights to deal with it.
There are blatantly racist social media posts - FB is infested, and I agree showing such posts so widely (no doubt because they get high engagement because people feel impelled to disagree with them) shows FB in a bad light.
One alternative is using the huge footprint people have left on social media (to say nothing of phone location data) to catch the people involved.
As a brown British person the riots have not caused me any great concern (contrary to what some posturing politicians may claim). Yes, it might be different if I lived in an area very close to where a riot occurred, but most people do not. I still think the UK is a lot less racist than the other countries I have lived or worked in, or no anything about, and a lot less racist than if was when I was young.
Remember that you're also free to open a hotel that doesn't have this policy and there's plenty of cheap land to be had very near Vegas. If you're right that this is something people want then it should be quite successful, maybe it can host the next DefCon. That's the American way to solve the problem.
Additional regulation generally yields less overall freedom.