Question of the Day - 09 December 2020

Yes, they do and, no, the technology is designed in such a way that (without having anticipated COVID-19) it can effectively see "through" the mask. As former game-protection professional and current artificial-intelligence developer Douglas Florence tells us, “It definitely has public-safety value. We can look for known terrorists, undesirable people — people that have come in my casino and caused problems before. So we’re trying to protect our guests with facial recognition as much as the other side — advantage players, thieves, and bad people, all those who don’t want their faces recognized.”

In the "old days" (i.e., 1999), biometric facial recognition consisted basically of compiling a database of customers’ pictures — as taken by surveillance cameras — and comparing points of resemblance with the faces of known undesirables. However, many felt this was invasive of privacy. Lawsuits led to regulation and the old photo-book approach has gone the way of the dodo bird. Now the standard is to create a non-photographic digital "fingerprint" of customers’ faces.

“The software now turns everything it sees into numbers,' Florence explains. "It’s just like a fingerprint: They basically score your face and it becomes a mathematical equation. It takes an image of your face and maps it. It basically looks at all of your features and, elevated to the level of artificial intelligence, it does a better job of learning. Typically, it maps your chin up to your forehead and each side of your head. Today, it can even do the profile of the face.  That’s how we can store that data about somebody, even anonymously.”

Florence continues, “It’s much more accurate than what it was and it has greater capability. The bottom line is, yes, whether you’re wearing a mask or not, we can identify you. Not that we want to challenge all the criminals in Las Vegas. We’re not trying to hide anything from anybody. This is legitimate security and it’s needed, and we’re protecting the assets of the property as much as the safety of our guests by using facial recognition."

There’s a downside to biometrics: false recognitions. As Thales Group reported, Amazon’s Recognition “solution could recognize as many as 100 people in a single image." It also falsely identified 28 members of Congress as people arrested for felonies. Both Amazon and Microsoft have pulled back from marketing their facial-recognition technologies to law enforcement. Oakland, San Diego, Portland, and Boston have banned its use by police.

Biometrics aren’t just for security anymore, either. Konami Gaming Vice President Greg Colella told a reporter that the technology “could create an anonymous ID for an individual player, and then track how often that person visits the property, how much she or he usually spends, and which in-house restaurant the individual prefers. Data could be sent to hosts, who could offer customized incentives.”

What if you don’t want to be tracked in this manner? Too bad, says Florence. “They don’t have your picture, which is what the law says. They don’t even have your name in most cases, unless you are a player at the property. When you go to a casino and you use their free wi-fi, it asks if you agree to the … end-user licensing agreement … well, who reads those? Do you read them? I don’t read them, you just click “Yes, I accept.” Well, guess what: In that [user license agreement] you may be giving up some rights because you’re using my wi-fi, you’re on my network. I might capture your name, your phone number, your e-mail address. I could capture whatever we asked you for to register to use my wi-fi. At lot of places, what do they want? Your e-mail address and your zipcode.”

He says casinos are following General Data Protection Regulations but are finding other ways to get the same information as pre-GDPR. “Once I find you, if I have a legal right to keep your data, I can keep it.”

As for security, one of the weak spots was not facial recognition but video surveillance. Florence points to the Mandalay Bay Massacre as a come-to-Jesus moment. “Up until the tragic shooting in 2017 we had several Strip casinos using VCRs,” he relates. “And the VCR footage, you know at a 7-11 if they get robbed, you had the grainy, fuzzy video in the old days. That’s what it was. Well today, 7-11s and department stores, they all use high-definition. So we don’t see fuzzy video anymore and when the Bellagio got robbed, look at how fuzzy the video was. That’s because it was analogue. They had a digital recorder but they were recording low-resolution, analogue video.”

Fast-forward to 2020 and high-definition is becoming the gaming industry standard, even if casinos still lag the curve. “I’m gonna say about 20 percent of the cameras in Las Vegas are now high-definition. It’s not a big number but they’ve put the high definition in the areas where they need it,” concludes Florence. Bottom line: The eye in the sky is still watching you—and more acutely than ever.

And here's your link to the new poll: I go to Vegas because ...