BIOMETRIC identification, such as fingerprint scans, will not be used in the mandatory pre-commitment scheme for poker machines, quashing fears that punters' privacy would be breached.Julia Gillard rules out fingerprinting under plans to win over Wilike (The Australian)
THE use of fingerprints and other biometric information has been ruled out under a promised poker machine pre-commitment scheme agreed by Julia Gillard to win the support of Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie.Those implementating new gambling regulations in Australia have disqualified biometrics as a reasonable identity management tool.
The mistakes and misapprehensions are manifold.
Smart cards won't work. Could this be why the gambling and hospitality industry is supposedly for them? They won't work because without a biometric check it will be a simple matter to get as many smart cards as one wishes.
The $250 loss limit implied by the ATM limit will help only the most affluent problem gamblers. What percentage of people with gambling problems can be saved by capping their losses at $250 per day? That's up to $90,000 per year. Allowing/forcing gamblers to set their own limits will only benefit non-problem gamblers because, by definition, problem gamblers are incapable of setting limits for themselves.
The discussion of the proposed system and biometrics is too narrow. A system designed to protect problem gamblers does not require the credentialing of every customer. The only biometric modality ever considered was fingerprint. Facial recognition was never considered even though the cultural discomfort and privacy concerns are much lower.
Many politicians don't care about privacy or problem gambling. They care about news articles. The most serious threat biometrics pose to privacy lies in the security of the database in which the biometric templates are held. But if the database is insecure, the biometric information is the least of a user's privacy worries.
What gives away more privacy?
A string of binary gibberish that requires a special computer program to get to something that is still not a picture of a fingerprint, face, iris, etc.
OR
The complete narrative of your gambling habits including:
Name
Address
Dates of card usage
Time of card usage
Locations of card usage
Cumulative gambling statistics
Etc.?
You'll know that the government is serious about the problem of gambling addiction when it adopts biometric identity management techniques to address it.
