The American Spectator

/p> p> NO SUCH ORWELLIAN LUCK br> Re: Eric Peters’s How Creepy Can It Get? : /p>

I work in surveillance at a casino in Reno, and I can assure you that facial recognition software is too expensive and too inefficient to be employed by any casino in Reno. At our casino, we have around 400 cameras, and you’d be surprised by what you can’t see. In addition, video surveillance is often hindered by such factors as lighting (or lack thereof), foreground objects blocking the view (such as balloons, promotional signs and slow-moving security officers) and technical glitches (we still record everything on videocassette). Sometimes, crimes occur in the parking lot, but the incident might be too far away from the camera lens for us to identify the perps. Not all cameras have the zoom capacity. Sometimes cameras on auto-pan pan away from criminal activity at just the wrong moment. Finally, since most casinos have more cameras than VCR’s, the industry uses a multiplex system, in which 16 camera views are recorded onto one VCR tape. A particular camera view must be decoded, but the movement is herky-jerky, and renders positive identification problematic at best. Sometimes, stuff happens right in front of a camera, and you can’t even tell what’s going on, because the mulitplex system distorts the imagery (among other things, flashing slot machine lights create visual havoc).

p>Believe me, I wish the Orwellian omniscient video surveillance system existed, because it would make my job a lot easier. br> — Robert Ellis /p>