You’re being scanned
Facial recognition systems have quietly crept into casinos, airports and some of New Zealand’s biggest retailers.
Inquiries by Stuff reveal the controversial technology is in use everywhere from SkyCity casinos to shops such as The Warehouse.
A security sector insider said he was getting three or four times as many inquiries about the technology compared with two years ago.
Meanwhile, police have enlisted the services of American company Dataworks Plus to design them a new facial recognition system to be rolled out this year.
Casino giant SkyCity is using the technology in Auckland, Hamilton and Queenstown to identify and block problem gamblers. Senior management allowed Stuff exclusive access to a room bristling with computer monitors in the depths of the Auckland casino to witness the technology in action.
A staff member enrolled in the system strode off the escalator and onto the gambling floor. A camera trained on the entry picked up her face, then an algorithm compared the image on the CCTV system to one on file, finding that it was in all likelihood the same person.
Staff heard an alarm and saw a message warning them a banned person had wandered in.
SkyCity chief operating officer Michael Ahearne said the system was rolled out late in 2019 and is in use at its casinos in Queenstown, Adelaide, Hamilton and Auckland.
He said its use was part of its ‘‘host responsibility’’. The company had images of customers who had placed themselves on a banned list because they had a gambling problem.
He would not be drawn on how many people were on the database and said some had been identified as problem gamblers by the casino itself, which had made the call to exclude them.
The system, designed by Kiwi company Torutek, went live in November.
Facial recognition was only used on the two cameras at each entrance, not the thousands more dotted around the casino, some of which can zoom in so closely they can see the hand of cards gamblers are holding and identify cheats.
A similar system has been used for two years at Christchurch Casino. Chief executive Brett Anderson said the casino is now trialling the system to monitor how long patrons spend on the floor – a key indicator of problem gambling. His team would approach anyone who spent more than eight hours in the casino.
Supermarket company Foodstuffs, which owns New World, Pak ’n Save and Four Square, revealed in 2018 it was using the systems in some stores to identify potential shoplifters. Foodstuffs
corporate affairs head Antoinette Laird brushed off recent questions from Stuff about which stores were using facial recognition.
A trial of the tech is also under way at an undisclosed branch of The Warehouse to target shoplifters, national loss prevention manager Phil Morley said.
‘‘As with any security measure, we have strict controls in place to ensure we manage people’s privacy appropriately including signage in store to notify customers,’’ he said.
A Mitre 10 spokeswoman said last year that one store in Auckland was using facial recognition.
Many Kiwis’ direct experience with facial recognition is at airports, where Customs eGates use it to match faces to images on passport microchips in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown. Wellington Airport will go a step further next year, introducing the technology to verify travellers’ identities as part of the international bag drop-off process.
Andre Van Duiven, managing director at Sektor New Zealand, sells security systems, including some with facial recognition technology. Interest had shot up recently, he said.
‘‘We’re probably having three to four times the conversations around facial recognition than we would have two years ago.
‘‘That and licence plate recognition are finding their way into cameras quite dramatically.’’