EDITORIAL: 'Surveillance City' - 2004-01-11
Between Dec. 22 and Jan. 1, airlines and hotels in Las Vegas -- and only Las Vegas -- were instructed to electronically transfer to the FBI all guest and passenger names and personal information on roughly 270,000 visitors.

Some hotel/casino officials tell the Review-Journal that -- because of their vulnerability to the decisions of federal and state regulators -- they felt intimidated into complying with these orders despite the absence of any individual probable cause or search warrants, safeguards required by the Fourth Amendment, which overrules any mere legislative enactment.

The hotels were even ordered to keep the snooping secret from those whose names were turned over.
Read the full story at Las Vegas Review-Journal

Big jackpots at these casinos -- especially for the robbers - 2004-01-11
She had a bomb. That's what she told the cashier. Hand over the money, she demanded, or the casino would blow.

Who could be sure she was bluffing? That her "bomb" was merely an empty box of honey buns?

As casino heists go these days in the north Mississippi Delta, the use of a pastry container was relatively artful. In September, two robbers simply wrestled a cash cart from a worker on the gaming floor at Harrah's, wheeled it through the front entrance, emptied loot into their getaway car and sped off.

When this cluster of casinos began sprouting in the cotton fields of rural Tunica County a decade ago, their beat-the-house allure was never meant to draw so many crooks.
Read the full story at San Francisco Chronicle