{"id":44533,"date":"2018-08-15T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44533"},"modified":"2018-08-14T10:25:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T14:25:23","slug":"hotel-security-theatre-meets-def-con-attendees-in-las-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/08\/15\/hotel-security-theatre-meets-def-con-attendees-in-las-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Hotel security theatre meets DEF CON attendees in Las Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Las Vegas hotels have a clear duty to be more vigilant about their security procedures, but the folks at the most recent DEF CON gathering were perhaps not the best-chosen group to try out a new “swaggering bully-boys security enforcement” policy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in October of 2017, hotels in the city started drafting more aggressive policies regarding security. Just as Caesars Entertainment was rolling out its new security policies, the company ran head on into DEF CON \u2014 an event with privacy tightly linked to its culture.<\/p>\n

The resulting clash of worlds \u2014 especially at Caesars Palace, the hotel where much of DEF CON was held \u2014 left some attendees feeling violated, harassed, or abused, and that exploded onto Twitter this past weekend.<\/p>\n

Caesars began rolling out a new security policy in February that mandated room searches when staff had not had access to rooms for over 24 hours. Caesars has been mostly tolerant of the idiosyncratic behavior of the DEF CON community, but it’s not clear that the company prepared security staff for dealing with the sorts of things they would find in the rooms of DEF CON attendees. Soldering irons and other gear were seized, and some attendees reported being intimidated by security staff.<\/p>\n

And since the searches came without any warning other than a knock, they led, in some cases, to frightening encounters for attendees who were in those rooms. Katie Moussouris \u2014 a bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure program pioneer at Microsoft, an advocate for security researchers, and now the founder and CEO of Luta Security \u2014 was confronted by two male members of hotel security as she returned to her room. When she went into the room to call the desk to verify who they were, they banged on the door and screamed at her to immediately open it.<\/p>\n

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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<\/a> #DEFCON<\/a><\/p>\n

— Katie Moussouris (@k8em0) August 11, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n