Permission Granted

Permission Granted

By Lew McCreary

April 01, 2005 — CSO — My wife and I recently visited Mohegan Sun, one of two vast, lavish Connecticut casino properties run by American Indian tribes. (The other is Foxwoods.) CSO profiled security and surveillance at Mohegan Sun in the October 2003 issue (see www.csoonline.com/read/100103/kind.html), so I found myself looking around, as we passed from the hotel into the casino, for cameras and other signs of security, which I pointed out to my wife. But mainly we were there to have fun, so I soon forgot about all of the human and digital eyes at work. We immersed ourselves in the gaudy foolishness of slot machines (amazing how quickly frenzy asserts itself as, spin after spin, one's quarters get eaten).

At some point, it dawned on me that the success of a casino depends on creating the convincing illusion that permission is broadly granted to its patronsthat they enjoy a degree of behavioral freedom largely unavailable in normal life. This is the open premise of a recent ad campaign by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA); "What happens here, stays here" is the tagline for commercials showing people in the aftermath of typical Vegas-style excesses. And the LVCVA website is home to a microsite with the URL Vegasfreedom.com.

Living now in a society where, increasingly, permission is vividly not granted, it can take a while to adjust to the casino experience. My wife and I left the casino floor in search of dinner still holding our large quarter-filled plastic cups. I wondered whether that was allowed, or did we first have to properly cash out? As we rode the escalator up toward our restaurant, I imagined we might be stopped and ordered back to do things correctly. But nothing happened. Then, standing outside of the restaurant and waiting for the vibrating coaster pager to buzz, I observed people walking up and down the concourse with cocktails in their hands. Was this not a violation of some rule? Apparently not.

While I freely admit to being an uptight stiff, something else was also going on: I was slowly shedding my hyperawareness of the degrees of restraint the world now imposes as the price of adaptation to new threats. At Mohegan Sun, you did not need to remove your shoes, loose change and other metal objects, place them all in a gray plastic bin and put the bin on the belt as you entered the casino!

The more firmly locked down our diminished, security-conscious lives become, the more eagerly people will flock to places like Mohegan Sun. The trick to securing these little oases of freewheeling carelessness is to focus only on what's really important. Keep the security infrastructure as friendly and unobtrusive as possible, but remain vigilant and aggressive behind the scenes.

Our article on Mohegan Sun quoted Dave Todd, vice president of security and surveillance: "When security folks make eye contact [with customers] and treat them nicely," he said, "it sets the mood for the day and makes people come back because it's a friendly and safe place."

At first, as I saw Todd's principles in action, they seemed perhaps unique to the casino business. But then it struck me that this was how security should be carried out everywherewith a reassuring mix of competence, confidence, polite interactions and clear priorities.

And of course, behind the scenes, a bunch of cameras.

Read more about data protection in CSOonline's Data Protection section.

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