Resorts World Las Vegas, a hotel that is hosting attendees of the DEF CON hacking conference this week, will perform daily inspections of rooms including those displaying a privacy sign, according to a letter from the hotel given to guests. An information security professional posted a photo of the letter online. Members of the cybersecurity community have reacted with a mix of anger and disappointment on social media.
“Welcome, and thank you for choosing Resorts World Las Vegas. We are pleased that you have joined us, as you have chosen to stay with us for relaxation, fun and excitement!” the message, written on hotel letterhead, reads.
“As you may or may not know, a well-known hacking convention will be held in Las Vegas during your stay,” it adds. DEF CON runs from August 8 to 11, with many attendees already in the city for the separate Black Hat cybersecurity conference or other events. “We remain committed to our guests’ safety and understand the utmost importance of cybersecurity, as well.”
The letter then describes what staff at Resorts World Las Vegas will be doing: “In an effort to increase the safety of our guests, we will be conducting scheduled, brief visual and non-intrusive room inspections daily beginning Monday, August 5. Rooms with a privacy sign will be included as part of the inspection process.”
Non-Intrusive in that they enter the room, which is their property and they have the right to enter, but they aren’t going through your stuff.
As a parent, I have the right to enter my kids’ rooms anytime I want. If I don’t do it respectfully, it will definitely be intrusive.
The hotel does have their rights. When they abuse those rights, it becomes intrusive. Rights don’t really have anything to do with feeling that someone is being intrusive.
When you give someone the key to property you own for an exchange of money, you indeed lose that explicit right.
So, no. You are incorrect. It is their property, but they gave up the right to enter with less than 24 hrs notice when they sold the keys.
This is by definition, intrusive.
I have to point out that they have, indeed, given more than 24 hours notice with the letter they posted. DEF CON hasn’t started yet and they informed the con organizers to inform the attendees with the rooms.
So this is reasonable.
Is it right? Probably not; and they’re probably going to upset a lot of folks. Let’s hope they use discretion and only inspect rooms where they believe something unusual is going on.
Let’s break those contract down: contracts are enforceable. Unless, they interfere with other rights you have and those take priority. How? Well there’s things like conscionability and consideration.
Consideration means, both parties have to get something in return. It can literally be a corn of rice, but it has to be something.
Conscionability means there’s things too egregious to be enforceable through contract law.
For example I can’t sign a contract that I want to be killed by someone else. It gets very complicated, but in it’s most basic form, it is unconscionable to just chalk a death up to freedom, just because you found a contract of the victim stating they want to be killed. The investigation takes priority and a prosecution’s case could be brought in spite of any contract. This render such a contract void.
So what does this fall under? Well there’s a lot of rights that people that rent a property have and that they can enforce against them against the landlords. Some of those rights pierce the veil of the contract and therefore are enforceable in spite of the contract.
Now I am not sure about the rights in this particular situation but there is a solid chance this creates a legal claim against the hotel company.
My point is, both of you are right, but you are getting down voted right now because you are ignoring the the fact that contract law, although very broad, is not absolute, and especially in this case it might be unenforceable.
Obligatory IANAL.
Spot the person who has a fundamental misundertanding of property rights.
Get fucked, my guy. I was polite, but youre returning fightin words.
Google the term “reasonable person” and quickly learn that any such agreement has no legal standing. It’s an agreement. It is not contractual. It is not enforcable.
They do, and you agree to whatever rights are outlined in the rental agreement when you check in and sign the forms.
