From Casinos to Counterterrorism

Casinos have tried to use facial-recognition software to identify known cheats in real time, but with little success. Casino lighting is often dim, and a player who wants to conceal his identity can hide behind a hat, sunglasses or a false beard.

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But in a few years, some say, iris-scan technology will be mature enough to use in gaming. Casinos might ask people to sit for a scan of the iris, which, like a fingerprint, has a unique pattern. That pattern would be transformed into a template to be matched against a database.

After Sept. 11, 2001, several airports tested facial-recognition software, with little success. But the government is continuing to invest in biometric technologies, and the military already uses iris scans on suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Following the Links

On occasion, national security and casino security interests directly intersect. Jeff Jonas discovered that after he developed a computer program for the casino industry that helps detect cheats using aliases.

A 43-year-old technology visionary and high-school dropout, Jonas soon realized that his system could also identify employees colluding with gamblers, say, by discovering that they share a home address. He calls his program NORA -- for Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness.

Every time a player registers for a loyalty card or a hotel room, Jonas explained from his lab near the Strip, the player's name, address and other data are sent to NORA. Also in the casinos' NORA database is information about employees and vendors.

NORA can spot links that a casino employee probably would never discover, such as a phone number shared by two different names, Jonas said. It once identified a casino promotions director who picked a winning ticket that belonged to her sister, he said.

The idea was so powerful that the CIA's private investment arm, In-Q-Tel, poured more than $1 million into NORA to help root out corruption in federal agencies. Then, after the Sept. 11 attacks, it became clear that link analysis could be useful in tracking terrorist networks.

In 2002, Jonas shared his technology with Pentagon officials, who were researching a more controversial technique called pattern-based data mining. Their aim was to identify terror networks from patterns of behavior, by plowing through vast beds of data such as hotel, flight and rental-car reservations. Jonas, now an IBM chief scientist, said narrowly focused link analysis is less invasive because it starts with a known suspect rather than casting about in the general population.

At the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, for example, investigators have used link analysis to track money laundering. From one Suspicious Activity Report -- which financial institutions are required to send to the government -- they have identified a money launderer's partners in crime. FinCEN has a decade's worth of data on 170 million report forms. "We find a tremendous amount of connectivity," said Steve Hudak, FinCEN spokesman. "We find suspects linked by addresses, suspects linked by phone numbers. So we definitely know that these people are operating together."

But privacy advocates warn that the farther it moves from the suspect, the more likely link analysis is to snare innocent people.

Chips Tracking Chips

Rolland Steil moves a stack of 34 casino chips across the felt of a baccarat table. On a monitor linked to the table in this desert laboratory, 34 numbers pop up. Each chip is embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that enables the casino to track how much money is being wagered on this roulette number or that baccarat spot.