A lobby group for Australian clubs has called for some of the country’s biggest poker machine venues to be exempt from new laws so it can store biometric data for several years and use facial technology to identify gambling addicts.
Tough restrictions on the collection, use, storage and destruction of biometric data – including facial recognition technology – have been proposed as part of the development of the federal government’s digital identity scheme, in an effort to improve privacy and protect sensitive information.
Clubs Australia has expressed concern the tougher restrictions could undermine some harm reduction measures now in place, including a requirement to stop people from gambling if they are listed on a self-exclusion register.
Most clubs in South Australia already use facial recognition technology to detect people listed on the register. Many venues in Queensland and New South Wales are also using the software, despite concerns from privacy advocacy groups.
The federal government’s overarching system will ultimately – subject to legislation passing the parliament – interact with the state ID systems, bringing about changes to the way they currently operate.
In a submission to the government’s consultation process, Clubs Australia accepted that stricter rules were an “important step to protect people’s privacy”. But it called for “flexibility” to ensure facial recognition technology could be used to enforce gambling exclusions.
“Where a venue uses facial recognition technology to identify excluded patrons, the club must retain sensitive biometric information to assist one-to-many matches,” the Clubs Australia submission said.
“It is important that the legislation and instruments giving affect to the digital ID scheme enables clubs to retain this information where necessary.”
“One-to-many” matching occurs when a search is conducted to match a face against other images in a large database. The new legislation would ban this practice unless used by authorised immigration or national security officials.
Lauren Perry, a responsible-technology policy specialist at the University of Technology Sydney’s Human Technology Institute, did not support a carve-out for clubs and was concerned about the call for one-to-many matching.
“Allowing pubs and clubs to retain sensitive biometric information for longer than is currently allowed by the digital ID bill would impact everyone who enters the venue,” Perry said. “This is not just going to impact the small amount of people who have self excluded”.
Lizzie O’Shea, the chair of Digital Rights Watch, said she would need more information from Clubs Australia before being convinced an exemption was necessary.
“[That would include] information about how facial recognition technology is being used and whether there are alternatives, whether they have best-practice cybersecurity safeguards in place, and whether there are strict rules around purpose limitation on the use of the information and technology,” O’Shea said.
“It is important that gambling venues uphold their obligations to support people who wish to self-exclude. However, the use of biometric information, including facial recognition technology, is controversial for a reason. It has problems with accuracy and the data required to use it is obviously highly sensitive.”
Wesley Mission’s chief executive, Stu Cameron, who is a member of the NSW government’s expert advisory panel on gambling, said the use of facial recognition technology was not needed.
“A cashless card would form the basis of the most effective self-exclusion system available,” Cameron said. “One card linked to every machine that a user might seek to self-exclude from, making the current push for facial recognition technology absolutely redundant.
“Privacy concerns, misidentification, data misuse and lack of independent oversight characterise the use of facial recognition technology in Australia to the extent that the Human Rights Commission has called for a moratorium on its use in law enforcement situations, like preventing money laundering.”
