Victoria is the first stop as privacy campaigners warn the technology is becoming routine
British Transport Police is expanding its trial of live facial recognition (LFR) to the London Underground, despite concerns about privacy and mistaken identification.The force, which polices railways across England, Scotland, and Wales, will begin its Tube deployments at Victoria Underground station. The cameras will then rotate between Underground and Network Rail stations until the trial ends in November.The trial began at London Bridge railway station in February and is intended to assess how the technology performs in a railway setting. It follows deployments by the Metropolitan Police, which says it will start using face-scanning cameras in London's West End and Soho by the end of this year after a six-month pilot in the south London borough of Croydon.
Live facial recognition scans faces within a camera's field of view and compares them with a police watchlist. A possible match generates an alert that an officer must review before deciding whether further action is warranted.
According to the railway bobbies, the technology deployed relies on the NEC NeoFace M40 algorithm, which appears to be the same across several forces."Expanding deployments into London Underground stations will help us assess the technology in a different transport environment while continuing to refine how it is used across the railway network," said the officer responsible for the project, chief superintendent Chris Casey.Critics describe the technology as dystopian and intrusive, and errors have already resulted in innocent people being mistaken for criminals and detained. Members of ethnic minorities appear to be more at risk of being mistaken for someone else by facial algorithms.
