What Stays in Vegas (43 page)

23
. “102 Million Cell Phone Numbers to be Available from Database
USA.com
,” press release, October 25, 2012.

24
. Woolley was acting CEO at the time; in 2013 she formally became CEO.

25
. DMA cited these statistics many times in 2012. See, for example,
www.the-dma.org/cgi/disppressrelease?article=1565
.

26
. The clients of all this personal data are not just companies trying to sell products. Politicians, from President Barack Obama on down, are making increasingly sophisticated use of data from Acxiom and many other firms to target their messages to receptive voters. Health care organizations can even buy data predicting how likely you are to keep taking your medications over the next year. For example, Fair Isaac sells such data in its FICO Medication Adherence Score.

27
. Acxiom letter to Congressman Edward Markey, August 15, 2012.

28
. Asked about the impact of Acxiom on the company's marketing, Wynn spokesman Michael Weaver said, “Regarding the number of room nights generated by partnerships with Acxiom, our records dating to back to our opening do not substantiate those numbers.”

29
. Author interview with Tim Suther when he was still at Acxiom.

Chapter 8: Recession

1
. In the two decades before the 2008 financial crisis hit, casino assets in Nevada increased more than tenfold. David G. Schwartz and Riva Churchill,
Nevada Gaming: Assets, Liabilities, and Expenses, 1984–2011
(Las Vegas: Center for Gaming Research, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2013).

2
. Ibid.

3
. Norton later became the chief analytics officer at clothing retailer Urban Outfitters.

4
. As reported in the company's annual 10-K statements.

Chapter 9: The Puzzle of Your Identity

1
. Stanley Milgram, “The Small World Problem,”
Psychology Today,
May 1967, 61–67.

2
. This narrative is based on interviews with Harry Lewis, who also shared with me his email correspondence with Mark Zuckerberg from that time. Those Zuckerberg emails have not previously been made public, Lewis said.

3
. For more details about the project, see
mypersonality.org/wiki/doku.php?id=about_mypersonality
.

4
. Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, and Thore Graepel, “Private Traits and Attributes Are Predictable from Digital Records of Human Behavior,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, March 6, 2013, at
www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/06/1218772110.full.pdf
.

5
. Author interview, March 21, 2013.

6
. Facebook communications manager Jay Nancarrow said the company had no comment to make on the study. Email to author, March 14, 2014.

7
. Intelius-operated sites include USSearch, ZabaSearch, Public Records, PeopleLookup, PhonesBook, and LookupAnyone.

8
. Author interview, December 18, 2012.

9
. Because rules governing the industry are limited, data brokers have a lot of leeway as to where to draw the line on what they sell. Some feel comfortable listing religion or sexual orientation. Others impose far greater self-restrictions. US Farm Data, a Nebraska-based data broker that rents lists of 2.5 million farmers, does not list cell phone numbers because it does not want to burden farmers with the cost of incoming calls. As a result, its listings are becoming less complete as some farms abandon landlines for cellular service.

10
. Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree, “Gaydar: Facebook Friendships Expose Sexual Orientation,”
First Monday
14, no. 10-5 (October 2009).

11
. The study did not find the same patterns for lesbians, either because they represented a small sample in the survey or because of different interactions in lesbian communities.

12
. Author interview with Mistree, February 27, 2013.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Weld declined to respond for comment when contacted.

15
. Ninety tries to pass the twenty questions may seem high at first, but it's not that bad, all things considered. For twenty questions with five choices each, it would take, on average, 119 trillion tries to get a perfect score by guessing randomly.

16
. The study assumed that people could read 250 words a minute. Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, “The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies,”
I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society,
2008 (Privacy Year in Review issue).

17
. Sweeney describes her findings at
dataprivacylab.org/projects/pgp/
.

18
. Despite the warnings the Personal Genome Project gives volunteers, Church does not see a great danger from sharing one's DNA with the world. He cites the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act's protections against health insurance and job discrimination, and he says there is no evidence of adverse impact on insurance. “Rumor has it is working in the opposite direction, which is there are people who are getting the DNA sequence and then deciding on their life insurance and long-term care based on the stuff they know and the insurance company does not know, and there is no law that restricts that,” he says. What about the impact from financial institutions? For example, might a bank want to decline a loan to someone unlikely to live very long? “These companies are not yet highly motivated to do that and . . . they would be ill advised to do that from a public relations standpoint,” he says. For his part, Church embraces a philosophy of posting intimate data about himself on his personal website (
arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/pers.html
). He tells the world he has suffered from a heart attack, carcinoma, narcolepsy, dyslexia, pneumonia, and motion sickness. He gives the exact coordinates of his home as well as his birth and marriage details, in addition to the names of his genetic and adoptive parents. He also posts a document that many others might have wanted to hide or even burn: a 1976 letter from Duke University expelling him for getting an F in his graduate major subject.

19
. See
stevenpinker.com/biocv
.

20
. Personal Genome Project volunteer Gamble consented to having his name published in his book.

21
.
IMS Health Incorporated v. CVS Pharmacy Inc., Caremark, L.L.C., Caremark Pcs Health, L.L.C., and Caremark PHC, L.L.C.,
No. 6174-VCL, Chancery Court of Delaware, filed April 27, 2011.

22
. See
www.netflixprize.com//rules
.

23
. Comments from unnamed reviewer No. 1 in email to Vitaly Shmatikov from Birgit Pfitzmann and Patrick McDaniel, January 26, 2007.

24
. The Netflix contest sought to improve the “measurement of how closely predicted ratings of movies match subsequent actual ratings,” thus better predicting movies a customer would like. See
www.netflixprize.com//rules
.

25
.
Jane Doe, Nelly Valdez-Marquez, Anthony Sinopoli, Paul Navarro v. Netflix and Does 1 Through 50
, filed in US District Court for Northern California, San Jose Division, December 17, 2009.

26
. Netflix officials declined to discuss the lessons of the contest for this book.

27
. Michael Barbara and Tom Zeller Jr., “A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749,”
New York Times,
August 9, 2006.

28
. Author interview, November 12, 2012.

Chapter 10: The Hunt for a Mystery Woman

1
. The page was still up at the start of 2014.

2
. I did find a Kristen Bright working as a publicist in North Carolina, but she said she had never heard of Instant Checkmate nor done any work for the company.

3
. Author interviews, December 21 and December 23, 2012, and January 4, 2013. I have withheld her real last name and Internet stage name at her request.

4
. Instant Checkmate founder Kibak says, “Our member care representatives use their real first names, but do not provide their last names.” Email to the author, October 16, 2013.

5
. Why would a company create a fictitious name and face for the company? An executive at a well-known Silicon Valley Internet company says some startups create fictional spokespeople for two reasons. One is that an invented name can show continuity in company statements, even though frequent churn at startups means real people are coming and going all the time. The other reason is that company officials sometimes want to distance themselves from a business they may eventually sell. In 2013, Instant Checkmate started working with an actual spokesperson.

6
. Email from Kibak to the author, October 16, 2013.

Chapter 11: Thousands of Eyes

1
. James Moore, vice president of iView Systems, says his company's license plate recognition technology works accurately 94 percent of the time. Of course, even if it identifies the license plate, it will not know the owner if the car is rented, which is often the case among Las Vegas casino visitors.

2
. Head of security Tom Flynn says Caesars Palace has three thousand cameras and that larger new casinos have as many as four thousand or five thousand cameras. MGM Resorts has about three thousand at each of its big casinos, such as Bellagio, ARIA, and Luxor, according to Yvette Monet in MGM Resorts public affairs. Mike Pfahler, director of corporate security at Fifth Street Gaming, said the Stratosphere, where he used to work, had more than 1,500 cameras in nongaming areas—key to watching the staff—and another thousand in the casino. He said the number has likely increased since he worked there. Officials typically agree that three thousand is about average for a large casino.

3
. No one knows for sure how many surveillance cameras exist in the United States, but experts say casinos are likely at the top of the list because they have the money to afford them and the need with all that cash around. “I don't know how heavily cameras are used in prisons, or banks, or nuclear facilities. I think you would be safe to say that the Las Vegas casinos are probably the most densely ‘camera-ed' civilian environments that we know of (and for good reason),” said Jim Waldo, the chief technology officer at Harvard University.

4
. Video cameras once stuck out as unusual objects. I remember walking around East Berlin during the final years of Communism, jarred by the many cameras perched above the capital's wide avenues.

5
. See
http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=72
.

6
. See
www.richardmarcusbooks.com/
.

7
. The Imperial Palace has since been renamed the Quad Resort and Casino.

8
. MGM Resorts has ten hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. Caesars has eight, not including the Rio, which is a few blocks away on the other side of the highway.

9
. In a December 12, 2012, speech to investors in Boston, Loveman said Caesars charter three thousand flights a year for their best customers.

10
. One of the murders was recorded by surveillance cameras in 2006 and eventually posted on the Internet. See
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0QlZm_zVSw
.

11
. Other than the Silver Nugget, these casino are the Opera House, Lucky Club, and Siegel Slots.

12
. Details of the Tony Ahn case come from the author's interview with Ted Whiting on May 31, 2013, and news releases related to the case.

13
. United States Attorney's Office, District of Nevada, “Former Casino Employee Sentenced to 57 Months in Prison for Stealing Player's Card Information,” press release, August 6, 2012.

14
. Whiting says he does not have a personal Facebook page, but he does have a LinkedIn profile.

Chapter 12: Mugged

1
. Kyle Prall email to Don Field, November 11, 2008.

2
. “Busted! In Austin” is also the title of a Texas blues song by veteran rocker Johnny Winter. “Busted in Austin, walking around in a daze,” he sang. Prall says he had never heard of the tune.

3
. “We are working to make
bustedmugshots.com
the premier website for local crime and arrest information. Our goal is to provide greater transparency to the activities of local law enforcement and provide never-before available criminal justice information to the public,” the site told readers in 2012. “In the near future, you will be able to view not only arrest information, but also the outcome of the arrests, incident reports, sex offender information and other local court records customized to your locality. This will be nothing less than a criminal justice information revolution. Never before has the public had access to the inner workings of law enforcement. Public information that has been stored in police stations and courthouses is, for the first time in history, being made available by Busted free of charge to the general public.”

4
. As the company's mission statement explained in 2012, “At Busted we have a simple process to initiate a review of your case for removal from our database for a one-time nominal fee. We gladly waive this fee for those who demonstrate that they have been exonerated or found not guilty of the charges. On the other hand, we do not allow the removal of serious violent or sex crime arrests that have not been exonerated or found not guilty.” See
web.archive.org/web/20121023164307/http://www.bustedmugshots.com/mission-statement
.