What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, on Permanent record

From Casinos to Counterterrorism
Las Vegas Surveillance, U.S. Security Efforts Involve Similar Tactics

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 22, 2007; A01

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.

"You could almost look at Vegas as the incubator of a whole host of surveillance technologies," said James X. Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. Those technologies, he said, have spread to other commercial venues: malls, stadiums, amusement parks.

And although that is "problematic," he said, "the spread of the techniques to counterterrorism is doubly worrisome. Finding a terrorist is much harder than finding a card counter, and the consequences of being wrongly labeled a terrorist are much more severe than being excluded from a casino."

Eyes in the Sky

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

"It's, are you a good guy or a bad guy? A threat or a non-threat?" explained Derk Boss, the vice president for surveillance for the Stratosphere hotel and casino, whose crew operates under what he calls the IOU system: Identify, Observe and Understand.

"There are going to be people that just want to come and gamble and enjoy your services," ( LOOSE ) he said. "And there are going to be people that are going to come to take your money. ( WIN ) Our job is to distinguish between those two groups." ( YOU CAN BE BANNED FOR WINNING. )

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.

On a recent Friday night, the surveillance team at the Stratosphere is watching a casino host they suspect of handing out unwarranted "comps," or vouchers for free rooms and meals to guests. Might he be taking kickbacks?

Down on the floor, the pit boss is observing players, looking for "tells" -- behavioral signs of cheaters or other undesirables ( WINNERS ). The night before, investigators identified a blackjack player as a card counter. Casinos dislike card counters because they can determine when the cards are to their advantage and raise their bets accordingly. ( WIN ) When the pit boss told the card counter he could bet only the minimum amount, he cashed in his chips and left.

While casinos have been monitoring suspicious behavior for years, the Department of Homeland Security is just now deploying specially trained officers to look for behavioral clues and facial expressions.

Casinos have tried to use facial-recognition software to identify known cheats in real time, but with little success. Casino lighting is often dim, and a player who wants to conceal his identity can hide behind a hat, sunglasses or a false beard.

But in a few years, some say, iris-scan technology will be mature enough to use in gaming. Casinos might ask people to sit for a scan of the iris, which, like a fingerprint, has a unique pattern. That pattern would be transformed into a template to be matched against a database.

After Sept. 11, 2001, several airports tested facial-recognition software, with little success. But the government is continuing to invest in biometric technologies, and the military already uses iris scans on suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Following the Links

On occasion, national security and casino security interests directly intersect. Jeff Jonas discovered that after he developed a computer program for the casino industry that helps detect cheats using aliases. ( OR ANYONE ELSE )

A 43-year-old technology visionary and high-school dropout, Jonas soon realized that his system could also identify employees colluding with gamblers, say, by discovering that they share a home address. He calls his program NORA -- for Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness. ( CHECK INTO VEGAS AND GET YOUR LIFE HISTORY IN A PERMANENT RECORD )

Every time a player registers for a loyalty card or a hotel room, Jonas explained from his lab near the Strip, the player's name, address and other data are sent to NORA. Also in the casinos' NORA database is information about employees and vendors.

NORA can spot links that a casino employee probably would never discover, such as a phone number shared by two different names, Jonas said. It once identified a casino promotions director who picked a winning ticket that belonged to her sister, he said.

The idea was so powerful that the CIA's private investment arm, In-Q-Tel, poured more than $1 million into NORA to help root out corruption in federal agencies. Then, after the Sept. 11 attacks, it became clear that link analysis could be useful in tracking terrorist networks.

In 2002, Jonas shared his technology with Pentagon officials, who were researching a more controversial technique called pattern-based data mining. Their aim was to identify terror networks from patterns of behavior, by plowing through vast beds of data such as hotel, flight and rental-car reservations. Jonas, now an IBM chief scientist, said narrowly focused link analysis is less invasive because it starts with a known suspect rather than casting about in the general population.

At the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, for example, investigators have used link analysis to track money laundering. From one Suspicious Activity Report -- which financial institutions are required to send to the government -- they have identified a money launderer's partners in crime. FinCEN has a decade's worth of data on 170 million report forms. "We find a tremendous amount of connectivity," said Steve Hudak, FinCEN spokesman. "We find suspects linked by addresses, suspects linked by phone numbers. So we definitely know that these people are operating together."

But privacy advocates warn that the farther it moves from the suspect, the more likely link analysis is to snare innocent people.

Chips Tracking Chips

Rolland Steil moves a stack of 34 casino chips across the felt of a baccarat table. On a monitor linked to the table in this desert laboratory, 34 numbers pop up. Each chip is embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that enables the casino to track how much money is being wagered on this roulette number or that baccarat spot.

Steil, a product manager for Progressive Gaming International, which developed the chips, expects all casinos to use RFID-enabled chips soon -- to detect counterfeiters, to keep track of chip flow at tables, to know instantly how much a player has bet, won or lost.

"We're providing so much data to the casinos, they're drooling for it," he said.

In the outside world, counterterrorism and Homeland Security officials are looking for ways RFID technology can help them, too. RFID chips are in new passports, EZPasses, credit cards and building passes. Soon they might be in clothing.

All this electronic data is trackable, as are text messages sent from cellphones or instant messages from laptops. Following the trail could uncover a terrorist network.

Or an innocent group of, say, bird-watchers.

"We often hear of the surveillance technology du jour, but what we're seeing now in America is a collection of surveillance technologies that work together," said Barry Steinhardt, the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty project director. "It isn't just video surveillance or face recognition or license plate readers or RFID chips. It's that all these technologies are converging to create a surveillance society."

'We Know Who You Are'

Under the elegant chandeliers at Caesars Palace, 10,000 people a day willingly give up personal information -- name, address, birthday -- and allow their gambling habits to be tracked so they can win free hotel rooms and show tickets. In nearly a decade, 40 million have signed up for Harrah's Total Rewards loyalty card.

Harrah's Entertainment, owner of Ceasars Palace and the industry leader in data mining for marketing, can then customize the gambler's experience. A guest celebrating her birthday might insert her card in a slot machine and be surprised by a promotions manager bearing a birthday card and a cookie. ( IN EXCHANGE FOR THE GUEST's PRIVACY )

"It's really about, how do we convince these people to be more loyal and give them a sense of 'We know who you are,' " said David W. Norton, senior vice president at Harrah's.

Guests may or may not see that as a good thing.

In December 2003, faced with a warning that terrorists were about to attack Las Vegas, the FBI asked hotels, rental-car agencies and airlines for customer data. Some balked, but others produced the data, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes when presented with a subpoena.

THEY KNOW WHAT YOU DO, AND ITS IN A Permanent RECORD.

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Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group

STOLEN FROM: Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group

Tim Thomas, LTC, US Army, Retired, has done extensive research and publishing in the areas of peacekeeping, IO, and PSYOP. He currently serves as a Senior Analyst in the Foreign Military Studies Office, Ft Leavenworth, and has written a fascinating piece entitled Hezballah, Israel, and and Cyber PSYOP which I encourage y’all to peruse and comment upon.

However, an evolving cyber phenomenon is underway: the concept of cyber psychological operations (CYOP, pronounced “PSYOP”)—which are cyber operations (those that use the computer chip) that aim to directly attack and influence the attitudes and behaviors of soldiers and the general population.

While armies continue to compete in digital battlespace, local populations are now caught up in digital influence space battles. As a result armies can no longer stand between an enemy and the public as they once did. [And America cannot rely on Regulars to neutralize and mitigate the effects of enemy propaganda on its national will — Cannoneer]. CYOP is also awash with “unintended consequences,” since we are only now starting to understand what degree of influence, persuasion, deception, and mobilization the cyber environment offers. For example, mobile (cell) phones became “tools for citizen journalism” in Lebanon since they provided people the capability to transmit audio, video and photographs by shortmessage service. Such contributions from “the street” carry their own form of psychological persuasion.

CYOP is characterized by speed, precision, and creativity. Speed is recognized due to the quickness of the message-response mechanism. An incident happens and is reported on the Internet, or via cell phone or video messaging, before legitimate [I’d put “scare quotes” around the word legitmate — Cannoneer] news services can adjudicate its authenticity. Notably, these message have infinite—yet precise—reach (some call CYOP precision guided messages ‘PGMs’). We can target friendly or enemy soldiers and populations with equal ease. Plus, creativity is an emerging issue.Technologies offer the ability to update time tested PSYOP techniques with new applications not tried or tested.

The cyber element enables traditional psychological operations (PSYOP) such as loudspeakers and leaflets to penetrate not just a few miles into enemy territory, but to intrude directly and pervasively into the local populations’ homes or across continents. The cyber element does so privately and quietly, invading not only computers and cell phones but the psychological well-being of the population as well. Local citizens on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict arevictims of an intense propaganda and counterpropaganda campaign, for the maintenance of public and international support.

According to Yonit Farago of www.timesonline.co.uk, [click on Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers for a description of exactly what an American Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group should be doing] there is also an intense monitoring and counterpropaganda campaign underway by Israeli supporters. Special software termed “megaphone” is used to alert Jewish students to anti-Israeli chat rooms or Internet polls. These students then attempt to influence the course of a debate or an opinion survey by marshalling friends and supporters to take part. This allows a place where “networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.”

US IO doctrine is weak (in fact, almost nonexistent) on the issue of counterpropaganda, and this is reflected in coalition operations.

. . . future wars will be personal, deceptive, civil-military, and involve worldwide recruitment. All of these items will be managed and performed by cyber elements . Ye l l o w journalism may also become a real threat.

One thing is very clear: CYOP is not only personal—but persuasive in new ways—some more powerful than any earlier PSYOP attempts. CYOP strikes raw nerves in a different way than a leaflet, due to its targeting precision with all forms of communications—auditory, visual, and print. CYOP appears to be a very invasive form of PSYOP that allows no mental sanctuary.

We must follow the CYOP phenomenon as it picks up momentum. Groups will initiate new and varied techniques, and everyone must be on guard to counter the unexpected. E-flets, silent loudspeakers, Google Earth, ring tones, and YouTube represent only the start of this phenomenon. Traditional PSYOP personnel will play a key role in uncovering the advantages offered by these technological advances, and then must creatively apply counters to them in warfare. [Non-traditional PSYOP personnel such as civilian auxiliaries will be quicker and more flexible, but Colonel Thomas was writing for a military readership — Cannoneer] CYOP can be private, silent, deceptive, intercontinental, and as full of hatred and prejudice as the initiator wants it to be—and all are issues that should concern us.

Good stuff. Put your thinking cap on and read it. The part about hard CYOP is downright scary. We aren’t fighting Industrial Age warfare between legitimate nation-state peers with Westphalian concepts of combatant and noncombatant, civilian and miltary. Everybody who can see this blog could be monitoring hostile sites and disseminating counterpropaganda. If the Israelis can do it, why can’t we? Y’all could be Cyber Guerillas.

Any cat wranglers out there?

( This is our Group IA , not the Israeli group)

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SOURCE CIIDG

Terrorism toolbar

My terror toolbar

Want to fight terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism online? Now you can.

‘On the screen of the radar for news but without the knowledge of the big media. This is the online fight for power of Islamic militants’. This is the beginning of the declaration made by Gerald, author of the Internet Anthropologist blog, in which he encourages his readers to fight online terrorism using a toolbar available from his website, explicitly created to spread information.

Gerald claims to be a former private detective with a degree in Internet Anthropology. ‘I created the toolbar for myself, but then I decided to make it public’, Gerald tells PeaceReporter.

Internet Anthropologist says Islamic radical power is growing on the Internet through the insidious indoctrination of a whole generation of Muslims, whom are shown an aggressive and militant outlook of Islam.

They are deceived by a debasement of their religion – it is said in this blog – and by a misleading representation of the mujahideen: all this is a false Islamic ideology still largely supported. ‘We propose a counter-ideology, to fight in the new battle field: the Internet’, explains Internet Anthropologist. ‘Using the Qur’an we oppose Al-Qaeda’s lies and we provide people with the right methods to discover them with the toolbar’.

Gerald’s aim is to teach web users to discover and recognise misleading information on the websites which support terrorism. Internet Anthropologist explains to people how terrorists can have access to detailed maps through the Internet and how they create worldwide financing networks. Also, through a regular publication (even weekly) of training manuals diffused in clandestine chat rooms they can hire more and more supporters.

In Gerald’s opinion, terrorism organizations have changed from being based on a pyramid structure to thousands of cells which keep in touch through the Internet. Nowadays everyone can have access to the ‘Mujahadeen Poisons Handbook’, a 23-page manual which purports to explain how to manufacture handmade potions. Another manual, called ‘The Jihad Encyclopedia’, thousands of pages long, teaches how to create terrorist cells in order to organise attacks. Internet Anthropologist argues that often those groups plan their attacks through chat rooms and e-mail cryptography or steganography. Now it is even possible to graduate online in jihad at the ‘al-Qaeda University of Jihad Studies’.

Professor Gabriel Weiman, department of Communications at Israel’s University of Haifa, estimated that radical websites praising for terrorism and political violence have increased from a few (ten years ago) to 4,700 (today). Scott Atran, a research director in anthropology at National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, interviewed many jihadists and discovered they spread around the world a false view of Islam, which has nearly nothing to do with the real Islamist tradition. Atran was so surprised to discover that the militants define the jihadist martyrdom as the only true value in their lives, using the very same words in the outskirts of Paris or in the Indonesian jungle.

Atran and Internet Anthropologist believe that forums and chat rooms should be used instead to spread the traditional Islamic values against those of martyrdom. To stop jihadists teaching them the traditional Islamic values may be a long process. However, at Internet Anthropologist they say that talking to people in forums may slow down or stop their radicalisation. ‘A false statement posted in a forum months ago’, says Gerald to PeaceReporter, ‘may appear as correct if no one replies with the truth. I do not fear terrorists but their fabrications’. Internet Anthropologist ask its readers to fight in this ‘war on terror’ using the toolbar. Those who decide to join must register in the Yahoo! Group explicitly created for the purpose and then he or she will be able to answer terrorists and to be up-to-date on the new publications.

The toolbar comes with the Arabic keyboard, 1,000 URLs of terrorist websites, Al-Qaeda manual, steganography and cryptography tools, dictionaries in 7 different languages, a list of the main forums used by the terrorists, investigative tools (for example http://www.trackingthethreat.com/), access to private networks (Vpn) and proxy tester, access to governmental sources, Cia and Nasa phone numbers, radiation and blast calculations. You just have to try.

Cecilia Anesi

Article

Thanks Cecilia, nice write up.
We also have :
ANTHROPOLOGIST 44 DATA BASEs, TERROR SEARCH

and Terrorist Names, data base, 24,000 names. bios. at the top of our Blog.
Join the team, Click to join AIcyber-Corps, fight internet terrorism.

Gerald