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| You make sense of it! |
The NORA software is able to sift through masses of seemingly meaningless data and come up with connections between people at the same workplace or connected to the workplace that raise suspicion and eventually lead investigators to criminal conspiracies or worse.
So--what about casinos...any value in this?
Okay, let's take a hypothetical casino situation involving Tom, Dick and Harry.
Tom lives at Address A. He is a casino dealer at Casino A. This information by itself means very little if nothing.
Now add Dick to the equation.
Dick lives at Address B, which happens to be a block away from Address A. He is a casino floor supervisor at Casino A. This information by itself means very little, but if coupled with the info on Tom, we note that they live near each other and both work at the same casino...big deal, right!
Now add Harry to the equation.
Harry lives at Address C, which is far from Address A and B, but he happens to work for the company that distributes playing cards to Casino A, where both Tom and Dick happen to work.
Getting interesting?
Well, not right off the bat, but then let's add this BIG hypothetical ingredient to the stew: Casino A gets hit by a major edge-sorting card scam at the baccarat table, the same scam made notorious by poker great/alleged casino-cheat Phil Ivey, in which the cards used in the baccarat game had defects that allowed the cheats to know their values when lying face down on the table and when they're the top card in the shoe.
The cheats walk with millions.
Then during a long investigation, surveillance sleuths using the NORA software come up with the above cross-referenced informaton and conclude that Tom, Dick and Harry all knew each other and therefore had the means to pull off the scam. The obvious reasoning is that Harry at the card-distribution company passed the info on the defective cards to either Tom or Dick or both, and then the conspiracy was hatched.
Should you buy into this?
Well, I have never been a big fan of the high-tech recognition software that supposedly puts casino and poker cheats out of business before they start.
It all began over a decade ago with the biotech facial-recognition software that reportedly recognized cheats and hustlers right between their eyes when they walked into the casino--even if in full disguise--because no one can change the metrics of their eyes.
All I can tell you is that even though I've been retired from cheating casinos for a decade and a half, I still am constantly inside them during my duties as a casino game-protection consultant and surveillance and floor staff trainer.
Working undercover, I got recognized just one time by a casino employee who hadn't known I was to be at his casino.
Did he recognize me from any facial-recognition software?
No...absolutely not!
He recognized me from a History Channel casino documentary TV show that he'd seen a dozen times. And besides, I have never heard of any major casino scams thwarted by early recognition of casino cheats through facial recognition software.
So what about NORA?
Well, it might help out substantially locating terrorists, but I am not sold that too many of the Tom-Dick-and-Harry scenarios like the one I painted above are going to re-play in the real casino world.
One reason is that even if NORA software can sift through all that meaningless info and make it appear relevant, there are just too many casino employees, suppliers, distributors and other connected people living near each other and working in the same casino.
Much better chance of catching the poker cheats and the casino cheats at the tables.
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