Las Vegas security – good enough for the government
Las Vegas isn’t only about sex and What Happens Here, Stays Here, you know. Not too many people realize that this city is surprisingly cutting edge.
Not cutting edge in the sense that we’ve blanketed every square inch of the city with free Wi-Fi (a nice little pipe dream of mine), but more in the sense that Las Vegas is very good at watching you. Hell, with as much money going between gamers and casinos, surveillance can’t be anything but top shelf.
Looks like the government may be looking at us as sort of a security testing ground, according to an article by the Washington Post.
Security is security. If it isn’t a casino looking out for unscrupulous folk trying to pull a few fast ones, it’s the Department of Homeland Security trying to identify terrorist threats.
Surveillance, facial recognition techniques and programs, RFID chips and a whole host of other tracking devices and software are working right now in this city gathering as much information as possible about you.
One such program, NORA (Non-obvious Relationship Awareness), was created by Jeff Jonas. The program detects cheaters who use aliases by basically cross-referencing every piece of available information. For instance, it can spot links such as phone numbers or addresses shared by two names.
The program had so much potential that the CIA had to have been salivating at the thought of it. It invested $1 million into NORA to combat corruption in federal offices. The technology became even more meaningful after the Sep. 11 attacks.
I’ll leave the issue of privacy versus security up to you and the ACLU. Have fun with it.
I’m just glad to read a story about my city that isn’t about drunken celebrities or prostitution. Or both.
Read the full Washington Post article here.
