Security Techniques Used In Vegas Don't Stay In Vegas

Interesting article about Las Vegas' techniques of data-mining to find cheats, and how the US government is now using their expertise to find terrorists:

Jonas is a leading surveillance expert, a database whiz who made his name catching casino cheats. His claim to fame is something called "nonobvious relationship awareness," which is a way of letting computers connect the dots between different data sets - like the big roulette winner who turns out to have the same home phone number as the croupier.

But once the Twin Towers fell, surveillance became a national priority. Homeland Security officials realized that Las Vegas was essentially a state-of-the-art test bed. And Jonas became the go-to guy for sorting through mountains of data, looking not for scam artists but terrorists. Last year IBM bought his company, SRD. Now he's one of about 300 "distinguished engineers" - even though he doesn't hold a college degree.

Among the other good things about liberty and capitalism is that there's always some expertise out there in just about anything you can think of.

posted by Ace at 04:34 PM

| Access Comments