The British Transport Police are trialling real-time facial recognition at Transport for London stations to identify individuals wanted for serious crimes. The first use on the London Underground will take place on Tuesday 11 August at Victoria station, and the pilot scheme will run for four months.
Passengers on the London Underground will be scanned in real time by facial recognition systems as part of a pilot scheme launched by the British Transport Police (BTP), the UK’s specialist rail transport police force.
The trials are being carried out with the support of Transport for London (TfL), the authority responsible for public transport in the British capital, and aim to identify individuals on police lists for serious offences.
The first use of the technology at a TfL station is scheduled for Tuesday 11 August at Victoria Underground station.
Faces are compared in real time against police databases
The real-time facial recognition system – Live Facial Recognition (LFR) scans the faces of people passing through the monitored area and compares them against an authorised list held by the British Transport Police.
This includes individuals wanted by the police or the courts in connection with offences considered high-risk, including sexual assaults, robberies and offences involving bladed weapons.
According to TfL, the technology only generates alerts when the system identifies a possible match with a person on the police list.
Images of people who do not match the list are not stored, but are automatically and immediately deleted.
The stations where the system will be used are selected by the BTP based on operational intelligence and analysis of crime data.
The project also focuses on assaults against women
One of the main justifications for introducing the technology is to combat sexual violence and harassment against women and girls on London’s public transport.
A study carried out for TfL shows that 77 per cent of girls aged between 13 and 16 surveyed said they had been victims of unwanted sexual behaviour whilst travelling on public transport in the last 12 months.
Furthermore, 91 per cent said they had seen someone else being subjected to such behaviour.
Another finding of the study shows that 40 per cent of the women and girls interviewed had, at least once, decided not to travel on public transport because they did not feel safe.
Among the measures that participants said they would find useful was the use of facial recognition to identify wanted individuals and alert the police.
“Everyone should be able to travel without fear of harassment, intimidation or violence. Combating violence against women and girls and preventing sexual offences on our network remain priorities,” said Siwan Hayward, Director of Security, Policing and Enforcement at Transport for London.
Four-month trial at London stations
The pilot scheme will run for four months, and TfL and the British Transport Police will evaluate the results before deciding how the technology might be used in the future.
Areas where LFR systems are in operation will be clearly signposted so that passengers know they are entering a space where facial recognition is being used.
The BTP maintains that the use of the technology complies with legislation on data protection, privacy, equality and human rights.
“Expanding the trials to London Underground stations will allow us to assess the technology in a different transport environment and improve the way it is used on the rail network,” said Chris Casey, Chief Superintendent of the British Transport Police.
According to him, the operations are based on intelligence and target individuals wanted by the police or the courts, including suspects of serious crimes and people who may be breaching bail conditions or court orders.
Facial recognition has already been tested at railway stations
For the British Transport Police, the technology is not entirely new.
The BTP has already used facial recognition systems during operations carried out at King’s Cross and Liverpool Street stations, which are managed by Network Rail.
However, the new project extends the trial to Transport for London stations and, by extension, to the much busier environment of the London Underground.
In addition to the operational results, TfL will also commission independent research into passengers’ perceptions of safety, both at the start and at the end of the pilot programme.
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