The state of South Australia is now requiring gambling business establishments to use facial recognition technology. Businesses will be required to implement the policy if they have 30 or more gaming machines. The policy is intended to help keep out individuals who have been banned from gambling establishments in the past due to cheating. Some people might view this as giving up more of their privacy, since this technology can be used to track people's location. Mistakes can also be made. An individual who has a face with a similar geometry to another person who is banned might be wrongly flagged and face repeated harassment every time they go to a gambling establishment, even when this individual clearly does not look like the other person in question. Businesses will not have a choice, this is being forced on them by the government. From December 3, 2020, significant gambling reforms came into effect in South Australia. New requirements were introduced relating to the use of facial recognition technology, touted as assisting licensees to identify barred persons entering a gaming area. "Facial recognition technology will further support and assist licensed venues meet their responsibilities of identifying barred patrons by alerting gaming venue staff when a barred patron is detected entering the gaming room," South Australian Consumer and Business Services (CBS) explains. Banned gamblers in South Australia to be found using facial recognition tech (msn.com) The gambling businesses have a choice between 8 government approved companies that they can choose from to provide the facial recognition services. One of these companies, Vix Vizion, claims their technology has can automatically match security video footage to the faces of individuals on a prohibited list over 90% of the time. The technology recognizes faces through a little bit of a different way than humans do, so is much less often fooled by disguises. Right now, about 80% of the big gaming establishments already used facial recognition technology in South Australia, before being required to do so.
