Think you are below the Radar? Don't be so game.
The detainment of two high-profile Online gaming executives made our industry collectively shudder. BetonSports? CEO David Carruthers was arrested at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport while waiting for a connecting flight en route from the UK to Costa Rica in July. Executive assistants to the industry's Gaming CEOs scrambled to keep the USA out of their boss' flight itinerary. However many believed at that point that Carruthers' apprehension was a targeted and specific situation and that travel to the US should continue without real concern. When Peter Dicks, a non-executive chairman of Sportingbet Plc was arrested entering Kennedy International Airport some weeks later, the USA was struck from the safe list of every publicly traded gaming company.
For US citizens in the online gaming industry the impact was also obvious. Many Americans who work for Sports books or casinos based in Kahnawake, Costa Rica or the Caribbean already use name aliases in hope to avoid the watchful eye of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service. For those people, after the arrest of Dicks, traveling to their mother country was now a real risk.
There has been much speculation about the existence of a so called 'watch list' which contains the names of known Online Gambling executives. The DOJ can compare this online gambling watch list with passenger lists owned by airline companies in the way they do with Terrorist and criminal lists. But what of Online gaming employees a little father down the totem pole? Surely those filling the less glamorous and less well known positions should be able to continue to travel through the United States without fear of being detained? After all, as long as you are not wearing a T-shirt with "I work for an Online Bookmaker" how are they to know? Many of you may be surprised to learn that US legislation allows customs and border guards to confiscate anyone's laptop and copy all the information within. There is no need for any ground for of suspicion either. Seized laptops must rank as business travelers' worst nightmare, and you would be forgiven for not reading about this before, in fact the issue was only recently brought to light by the (US) Association of Corporate Travel Executives. An informal survey of 2,500 international members conducted by the ACTE found that 90 percent did not know that U.S. customs officials had the right to examine, copy or even seize laptops without having to give a reason. This law dates from 1985, but its increased use is part of the post September 11 vigilance from customs and border guards. One woman from the ACTE survey claimed she had been waiting a year for her laptop to be sent back. Aside for the inconvenience of having to surrender a laptop for an indefinite period of time and the huge disruption it would cause to a business trip, there is also a question of privacy.
A court ruling in California earlier this month found that laptop searches were a serious breech of privacy and not part of a routine search. The U.S. government has challenged this ruling. While the ACTE are not questioning the validity of the law, Greeley Koch, president of the ACTE, suggests that frequent flyers shouldn't have anything on their computers that they would not want anyone else to read.
But if your business is Online Gambling, then that is the Department of Justice's business also.
posted by Ian of egaming pulse
