do you know for a fact that i you have a firearm you told me you did
when we just spoke outside you suspect that i have no sir when i asked you you said yes
said outside you're a firearms man what you said it's a flashlight oh great well let me put on some
pants ben was in las vegas for defcon the world's largest annual hacker convention ben's day job is
in the field of cyber security he was staying at the paris las vegas hotel around 11 p.m on sunday
august 14th he startled out of asleep in his dark hotel room there's pounding at the door he walks
to the peephole in his underwear stares through and sees what appears to be armed law enforcement
and tactical gear surrounding his room he's ordered out of his room still in his underwear
then they search his room looking for firearms but they're not law enforcement but rather the
hotel's special response team they refuse to explain the basis for their belief that ben
has firearms in his room which he doesn't in addition to working in cyber security ben is
also involved in the firearms community and he operates the open source ordinance youtube channel
where he posted the originals of the video you're about to see ben reached out to me and i'll post
up some of his interview with me you'll find his channel link in the description but check this out
this is highly disturbing a private hotel security swat team busting in your room and searching it
giving no reason for doing so leaving us only with a few different tinfoil hat explanations
here's the footage then let's discuss whether we have any constitutional rights at play here at all
because i see more of this happening sure i mean you don't see what happens because
i was completely disrupt and uh saved from my underwear and it was 11 p.m at night i just been
rousted out of a pretty nice sleep and there was a pronounced banging on my door this wasn't a a
considerate knock this was one of the cop knocks that you see on live pd where uh it's a demanding
entry uh very quickly the the hallway surrounding my room there in the paris uh was completely
filled with uh what appeared to be a half dozen at least individuals wearing tactical gear armed
one carrying a large backpack of what i've been told later was entry tools that at that point
they said come out show us your hands uh at that point again i just woken up not 30 seconds prior i
slowly put my hands out out the door and and exited my room in nothing but my uh
my boxer briefs and it was not uh as they characterized voluntary they did not ask me
i'm sorry
what's that why are you talking to us i would like you can
you call me if you would please can we talk please well we've already talked right
i don't care if you record me okay great please comply with the policy and check your firearm
sir so we can help stop bothering you and you can enjoy the rest of your evening like you said
do you know for a fact that i have a firearm sir you told me you did when
we just spoke outside you suspect that i have no sir when i asked you you said yes
you said outside you're a the flashlight what you said it's a flashlight oh great
well let me put on some pants okay okay uh jason yes sir great fantastic
so um was anyone of this uh hotel in this room earlier
no sir no no i don't know if uh housekeeping i mean are you talking security personnel or
first off however i could do a lock interrogation i can tell you for certain but
please do a lock interrogation as soon as you can reasonably do so sure that's the problem
first off you guys were both when you removed me from my room here like we asked you to come
outside no no you demanded i came outside and you allowed to see it and you came i
i would like you all to remove yourself from my room right now will you hold on well first off
i want you to remove yourself no from my room okay so you you are refusing to remove yourself
from my room thank you will you check in you have a firearm in your possession your firearm
open the safe please do not reach your hand inside the safe just open it for us please
eat if you touch your firearm sir you're going in
restraints please do not touch your firearm just open the safe please
well
i left it in prompt you [ __ ]
the safe is clear thank you sir all right i went shooting earlier today in perum
and left it in parum okay so please kindly go yourselves that's not really necessary it is
necessary you said yes i had had okay so you're just using contacts and tents got it okay yeah so
i understand please remove yourselves collectively from my room okay if i may before we remove
ourselves collectively the policy of seizure entertainment if you do notice a firearm please
check it in with security otherwise you will be asked to leave noted okay again you you you all
and go i'm sorry my apologies um collectively go yourselves and could i have a card from you again
i want everybody that will present you i'm going to get that card
okay so you're saying that corey here cory works for me for you and you have a reason to believe
i have a firearm in my mind we made contact in the interest of advising the policy that we do
not allow firearms and if you did have a firearm to ask you to comply with the policy no which you
do not have a firearm you you said you explained you left them right yeah okay so then i'm again
apologies for the intrusion waking you up again i do understand that we have to follow our policies
these guys have to be safe too so first of all do you want to do a voluntary statement i can
provide you and i can give you a copy of it i can give you the report number i would like to have a
voluntary statement from you okay from and have a report number i can give you a report number but
i'm not going to do a statement and give you a statement i'm asking or i'm saying you can
do a statement i can give you a copy of that and it'll be in over you don't have to do it now you
can do it tomorrow morning if you wish you can do it anytime you cannot do it i can give you a
report number without doing it if that's what you wish i can write it on the back of my car i want
to know where this came from again it's private property we were trying to enforce the policy
that's all i can tell you you have no probable cause again this is not this is private property
nor enforcement oh agree more reasonable articulable prosecution private property we have
the rights in the country to make sure that all of our guests and our employees are safe and you
did with an obnoxious amount of force okay what's obnoxious what about what definition is obnoxious
how many people made entry into my room they have a policy right your policy how many people
how many people went into my room i know you can count i can count
just give me a give me four there's literally four of them you saw them so i know you just want me to
say it on tape yes i do just like i'm security for the casino if we respond to an incident a minimum
number is two they have their safety protocols they respond to situations like this they have
a response team that's how they do it so there were four people at this point that at night
knocked on your door there was actually that demanded entry we asked you to comply they asked
you to show your hands which you did you stepped down i've got one hand i've got two hands again
yeah again i'm really hurt at this point no you don't okay i paid for this room yes sir you did
we're just repeating ourselves at this point so again i can give you a voluntary statement you can
fill out if you wish if you don't wish to that's fine otherwise i would like to speak to a member
of management i'm a security manager no i gave you much higher than you okay that's not gonna
happen tonight you can speak to a hotel manager if you wish you can go down to the front desk who
don't mind that's going to resolve the situation again there's no one higher than me here right now
to have this conversation with you and we are just going over and over the same stuff so i'm going to
go ahead and leave i understand you're upset i'm sorry for the introduction understand how upset
you probably should at this point okay so just please try that i'm trying to be polite
i understand what i've said have i not tried the entire time to talk to you reasonably and calmly
where's what i've been trying to do a half dozen thugs outside my room okay we're gonna go now
so when you first opened the door did you believe that they were the police i thought they i thought
they were without my glasses on i didn't know exactly what was was going on at the time and then
they made every appearance that they were there with law enforcement authority come to find out
nobody there actually was a local law enforcement i initially told them i said look i'm not dressed
i will not exit my room and they said it's okay it's just us out here nobody else is going to see
or at what point did they explain why they were there they said they had reason to believe that
i had a firearm in my room where i said look i'd spent the previous 24 hours um with friends in
param and had actually been shooting earlier that day i was shooting my friends my friend's handgun
my friend's rifle and i said look yeah i have been shooting uh i have had a gun today i don't
have it i'm a weapons manufacturer i'm an 0702 sot so yeah i'm around guns we're you know did
they ever explain why they believed that you were in possession of of guns in your hotel room no and
in fact um the multiple times i i queried them on that subject they would not provide any context
that would bring you to my door at 11 pm at night and they provided nothing can you
think of any reason why they would have had to suspect that you had firearms in your hotel room
no one i've been racking my brain the entire time since because i went to this conference as a as
a cyber security professional and was nothing but a consummate professional the entire time
i had no negative interaction with any hotel or casino security the only time i actually had any
conversation with hotel security at the uh at the paris las vegas was when i asked one of the
security guys hey is there anywhere on property i can get a black coffee for under eight bucks
that's the only conversation i had with anybody uh in security the entire time i was there
wouldn't put it past them to have have seen such or gone through my stuff when i wasn't there prior
to them knocking on the door that night was there any reason for you to believe that you you weren't
welcome in that hotel room that you had paid them for no no um had they hadn't asked you to leave
or anything like that no like i said the only interaction with anybody from the hotel was when
i asked one of the security guards one morning where the cheap coffee was and so you voluntary
at that point after all this went down you just voluntarily left that hotel yeah um i can take a
hint i know when i'm not wanted and i know when i don't want to spend my money at an establishment
that would storm my room for no reason they could should convey with a half dozen armed goons at 11
o'clock at night when i'm trying to sleep and there was no involvement with law enforcement
i mean the police never showed up none the police never showed up a vegas metro wasn't involved i
mean i had no problem checking into my flight and getting clear to tsa i was at the paris las vegas
i was provided with contact information for the manager of the hotel stood she
she called me yesterday morning and stood behind everything that was done said we back to activity
100 it was the whole caesar's family of caesar's entertainment properties uh flamingo
link does this concern you you know being that vegas is a place that has firearms related
events there i mean does this concern you that perhaps you were just targeted as a member of
the firearms community in that something else is going on here certainly um absent any kind
of information again that they were unwilling to provide uh i'm left to my own suppositions and
i i honestly think the entire gun community is being declared persona non grata in in las
vegas and their money is simply not welcome here i i know my money here is uh certainly not going
to be welcome nor forthcoming in the future and i'd really urge anybody coming to show
you know town for shot show or any of the other big conventions to really avoid uh the caesars
entertainment group properties and anything they can do to to not provide money to people
that are trying to hamstring the community and target individuals with no notice or
professionalism whatsoever many people know the basic rule that constitutional rights can only
be violated by government officials and that therefore they don't protect us from private
actors at first blush this seems to be the case here despite their appearance these were
private security guards there may be nevada state law protections at play but it's difficult
to implicate federal civil rights protections that would require just a little bit of legal
gymnastics but the more i research this after having watched this footage i think there are
some possibilities there are actually quite a few cases out there discussing private hotel
security and constitutional rights many of these arise out of criminal cases there are actually
cases where federal courts have attributed state action and fourth amendment violations to private
hotel security however these cases involve the question of suppressing evidence in criminal
cases basically if private security searches a hotel room then the police arrive there may be a
sufficient connection to establish state action by the private security because that's how law
enforcement ended up with whatever evidence was seized there actually was a las vegas casino
that was found liable for section 1983 violations in a 9th circuit opinion where they had a system
of working with local police in issuing citations performing certain law enforcement functions that
was sal versus desert palace inc from 2012. in the last few years with concerns over active shooters
certain hotels in las vegas have apparently formed their own swat teams as we see here
so as to provide what is essentially a faster law enforcement response so there may be facts here
depending on the level of interaction between hotels and local law enforcement to show that
there's some similar sort of privatization of law enforcement so as to create a faster response now
where that's the case the government shouldn't be allowed to avoid section 1983 liability
to citizens by merely delegating their law enforcement functions to private corporations
so there may be a theory of liability there especially if this is something we're going to
see more of in the future another possibility the thought of which is fueled by the speculation here
regarding the source of the hotel's belief that ben had firearms in his room is that perhaps the
federal government is indeed compiling maintaining and sharing information about the firearms
community with private corporations responsible for site security we don't know if that was the
case here but can we really take anything off the table at this point if that were true that
could be another potential basis for federal civil rights liability i suspect we'll be seeing more of
this type of activity in the future just as we've been seeing troubling behavior recently out of
the atf as well as the fbi instead of a social credit score perhaps they may give us a firearms
community score do you have access to machine guns well you may have a great credit rating
as always thanks for watching you'll find more information in the link below to my blog at the
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