Gialmere
Gialmere
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bobbartop
July 10th, 2019 at 6:39:56 PM permalink


There's nothing new or unusual about a casino using things like cameras and players cards to track its customers. The casinos in Macau, however, are now dialing this basic concept up to 11. The main idea is to give casinos a way of easily separating who might become serious gamblers from those just having a fun weekend.

It begins the moment you enter the building with hidden cameras using facial recognition technology to tag you. I assume, if you're a new customer, the computer assigns you a temporary ID number while returning guests would have their complete files accessed and attached to their facial images. The table games and checks/chips are all tagged with radio-frequency identification allowing your (real time) playing style to be sent to a centralized database where your risk profile is created and/or updated. Gamblers who keep playing when losing are singled out for immediate and future perks.

What games do you play? How much do you bet? How often do you win? Do you bet more when you lose? Do you enjoy high HE side bets? How often do you take a bathroom break or (in Macau) stop to use the smoking lounge. Do these breaks affect your play? Does alcohol affect it? Are you distracted by a pretty cocktail waitress?

The answers to all these questions are in your profile and as you might imagine there are ethical issues to consider. Some people involved wonder if rich clients will want to be watched. And what happens if the police or some other government agency wants database access?

For now though Macau seems to be full steam ahead with the tech. To be fair, there are many legitimate uses for it. High value customers could be quickly spotted and a casino employee immediately sent to see to their needs. Different table games (and their min/max bets) could be opened or closed based on who is in the live play area. Stolen chips could be radio tagged as such while counterfeiting is deterred. Dealers could be monitored by management for how many hands get played an hour. Player/dealer collusion would be easier to spot while honest mistakes would be easier to correct. Banned players would set off sirens at the doorway and their facial file shared with other casinos.

Will this tech come to the US? Who knows? The Chinese are much more used to being monitored than Americans. Then again, how do we know it isn't already here? As one tech official assured a potential buyer: “Your customers don’t even realize they are being tracked.”

Full Story at Macau Daily Times

Oops! Government Crackdown Response at Yogonet
Have you tried 22 tonight? I said 22.
FleaStiff
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bobbartop
July 10th, 2019 at 7:21:31 PM permalink
Fqcial recognition used to be slow and computationally greedy. Now faces are not compared to twelve standard faced and index vectors generated. There is no time wasted trying to adjust image angles and no computational resources are devoted to isolating a person face.
Comparisons are made to a bell pepper and bok choi or similar ojects, the image of the person walking a hallway is flipped upside down so its easier to tell where the face is. Ear data is collected but rarely the full 14 points. More than one camera is used so averting gazes is futile.
Gandler
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August 4th, 2019 at 8:11:02 AM permalink
I was under the impression most large casinos already use such a system? I know when I took a college course of gaming economics and toured an AC casino security (professor was former manager) , they had very similar things, several years back. I am not a computer expert so I don't know the coding or the technology behind it, but casinos track most players, and track games/machines they play wins/losses places they like to visit like clubs, how long spent in hotel rooms, what restaurants your prefer, types of shows you go to, etc..... Basically assume everything you do in a casino is monitored and recorded, because outside of the bathrooms and hotel rooms it probably is..... (that is why comps seem so personalized even though they are just printed from logged data of preferences)
And, unless you are a foreign tourist, they probably know who you are the moment you enter (or even sooner if your car plates get logged in the parking garage or valet)….. The facial ID tech may be higher quality now, but same concept. Even if you do not have a player's card at a particularly casino, the casinos know who you are and how you play (much shared data in the industry).
charliepatrick
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MrCasinoGames
August 4th, 2019 at 11:48:24 PM permalink
There's also an idea to use it in pubs (bars) to identify who has been waiting to order their drinks first (in the UK many places operate with order and pay at the bar for your drinks). This would stop those barging in getting in before you. They say it will be quicker as everyone won't be fighting to get to the front and the average pub would sell 1400 extra pints/year.
Gandler
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August 5th, 2019 at 3:52:57 AM permalink
Quote: charliepatrick

There's also an idea to use it in pubs (bars) to identify who has been waiting to order their drinks first (in the UK many places operate with order and pay at the bar for your drinks). This would stop those barging in getting in before you. They say it will be quicker as everyone won't be fighting to get to the front and the average pub would sell 1400 extra pints/year.



Japan uses it in cigarette vending machines to check age without ID.

China is already using it through most of the country to track citizen behavior (you have a social credit score in China). Other countries probably have it as well, but are less open.

Some people would like to see it in America. I have mixed feelings about public use of it. It would be nice to have more security camera in public areas and roads, but it would drive the privacy advocates crazy.
BleedingChipsSlowly
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August 5th, 2019 at 4:33:44 AM permalink
[Consumer privacy issues are a] red herring. You have zero privacy anyway, get over it. - Scott McNealy, cofounder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, 1/25/1999
“You don’t bring a bone saw to a negotiation.” - Robert Jordan, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Gialmere
Gialmere
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August 6th, 2019 at 4:59:40 PM permalink
I can only wonder about the government response to this. The story l read, for example, said that the new tracking tech would be allowed for casino security but could not be used for profiling players. But is that, or any of what they say, true?

When the original story broke the response was overwhelmingly negative. Although the tech has many legitimate uses (including customer service), it comes across as saying, "What happens in Macau stays in Macau...on a server...forever." Some quick damage control PR was needed and lo and behold the G steps in.

Maybe the response is legit but, in that corner of the world, who knows how the various governments interact? Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown.
Have you tried 22 tonight? I said 22.
Mission146
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Gialmere
August 11th, 2019 at 10:07:46 AM permalink
Does this really make the casino industry any different from any other?

https://wizardofvegas.com/articles/big-brother-is-watching/

Thanks for the article idea, Gialmere!
https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/off-topic/gripes/11182-pet-peeves/120/#post815219
Gialmere
Gialmere
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bobbartopsmoothgrh
August 24th, 2019 at 11:21:07 PM permalink
In another follow up, the Macau government regulators are now backing off from earlier statements. After the initial story broke, they declared a ban on the new tech although a meeting with casino representatives was held behind closed doors so nothing official was known. Now that the hullabaloo has blown over, they say that the new tech will be allowed if the casinos submit to them an application to install it. Also any video or data obtained from high-surveillance tools is to be kept by the casino operators only.

Full Story at Macau Daily Times
Have you tried 22 tonight? I said 22.
bobbartop
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August 25th, 2019 at 12:17:35 AM permalink
Quote: Gialmere


Maybe the response is legit but, in that corner of the world, who knows how the various governments interact? Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown.



Good one.
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
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