What Stays in Vegas Read Free Page A

personal data was not as widespread on the Internet. She said fine. Now, years later, Internet searches for her name still turn up her enthusiastic description of her nocturnal exploits. In 2014, I decided to see if I could find her again, even though I had no contact details or clues about her whereabouts eight years later. An Internet search found data brokers offering to sellher address, phone number, and other details for a few dollars—a relatively new development described in Chapter 6 .
    In the Internet era, it is getting ever harder to keep personal information—what happens in Vegas—to stay in Vegas.
    The Inner Sanctum
    What changed over the years since I first visited Las Vegas is that businesses everywhere started collecting as much information on their customers as possible. With a lot of money at stake, casinos played an important role in expanding the corporate use of customer data. Starting in the late 1990s, a self-described math nerd became the driving force behind Caesars, making them a widely admired engine of data collection. Boosted by vast banks of computers, Caesars today know the names of the vast majority of their clients, exactly how much they spend, where they like to spend it, how often they come, and many other characteristics. They even know exactly where many of their customers are at any given moment—whether they are sitting at a specific Wheel of Fortune slot machine or playing blackjack in the wee hours of the morning. They gather all these details with the consent of those who choose to participate in their loyalty program.
    Gathering so much data about customers has proved enormously lucrative. Caesars Palace evolved into the headquarters of the world’s largest casino company, called, naturally enough, Caesars Entertainment. Executives from many industries looked to the company and its CEO, Gary Loveman, to understand how gathering information about customers could boost the bottom line.
    In 2012, I returned to Las Vegas to ask Loveman’s permission to peer into the secretive world of data gathering at Caesars Palace, located at the fifty-yard line of Las Vegas Boulevard, the famous Strip. After navigating through a maze of slot machines, restaurants, cafes, and lobbies, I found the correct bank of elevators for the executive offices. I had expected to find the bigwigs occupying the penthouse level overlooking their empire. But I was told to make my way to the mezzanine level. A lone receptionist to one side greeted visitors after they passedthrough a set of glass doors. She buzzed me into a separate, spacious antechamber. I watched as a waiter in tails trundled by pushing a food cart, a shiny silver dome covering the CEO’s meal.

    View of Las Vegas Boulevard, the Strip. Source: Author photo.
    Las Vegas had become a vast data collection machine. Because of the huge amount of money at stake, casinos have used customer information to innovate in a wide array of activities, including direct marketing, loyalty programs, surveillance, and photo recognition technology. Sin City is also a major source of public records because more couples marry here than anywhere else in the United States. If things do not work out, Nevada has long made it easy to split up, and divorce records provide even more information that ends up in public dossiers. Powered by fast computing and cheap storage, businesses from corner stores to international conglomerates gather information about clientsfrom many different sources. All told, private firms, whether in Las Vegas or elsewhere, know more about us, including our intimate secrets, than ever before.
    After a few minutes I followed Loveman’s assistant along the same path of the waiter. A tall wooden door doubling as a wall in the antechamber slid to the side, and we proceeded to a windowless conference room with wood-paneled walls. Loveman arrived and took a seat in front of his lunch. The CEO had a bit of a baby face although he