Melco Crown tightens security with facial recognition technology

Sunday 14th of February 2016

Melco Crown has reportedly adopted face recognition technology in an attempt to prevent banned patrons from entering its casinos, local media reports.

The facial recognition system, named FaceVACS-VideoScan, scans people’s faces in live video streams and compares them to photos of banned persons which are stored in databases. The software is able to compute demographical information, client behaviour, people movement in time and space, and frequent visitors, according to the German biometric firm, Cognitec who is behind the technology. According to Cognitec managing director Stephen Meltz, it was the first system of its kind in the casino market.

Leroy Daniel, executive director of surveillance operations at Melco Crown Entertainment, said: “We are confident that our joint commitment to this significant project will result in safer casino environments for casino staff and patrons.”

The technology comes at a time when gaming-related crimes have recorded an increase of 38 percent to a total of 1,553 crimes in 2015 in Macau. According to a local casino insider in an interview with South China Morning Post, “hundreds of people [are] banned from entering from casinos in Macau, and dozens of new notifications are issued by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau every week.”

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