The British Transport Police (BTP) is trialling the use of live facial recognition (LFR) at railway stations at selected transport hubs in London.

The transport authrity say the pilot will run for six months to evaluate the effectiveness of LFR on railways, its impact on public safety, and the public’s response to the technology.

The technology is already in use, and was first deployed on 11 February at London Bridge railway station, though BTP says that all future operations using the technology will be announced prior to its rollout.

The transport authority says that the LFR deployent will be “inelligence led,” and only those on identified to match a predetermined watchlist will trigger an alert. An officer is meant to analyse the ‘match’ generated by the system’s algorithm before an indiviual is approached.

The Police will use the NEC Neoface M40 algorithm which was indepentently tested by the National Physical Laboratory which recommended settings of the algorithm that “minimises the likelihood of any false positive indication and adverse impact on equitability.”

The Police also said that they will produce “highly visible signage” where LFR is used as well as detailed plans to the pubic is aware of the tech’s operations. The public will also be provided altenrative routes if they do not want to enter the “recognition zone,” the Police said.

People not on the predetermined watchlist will not be identified by the LFR, and their images and biometric data will be deleted immediately, the Police said.

The trialling of LFR across different transport hubs in the UK was decided before the Home Office’s consultation on the controversial technology ended, which asked the public to share their views on how the technology should be rolled out and regulated.

The current government is planning a major police overhaul, putting new technologies like LFR and AI into primary focus as the government seeks to shore up the police force with innovative technologies.

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The rollout is particularly controversial as there is a lack of concrete laws regulating the police force’s use of the technology – instead a “patchwork lof common law, data protection, and human rights legislation” exists to establish the legal basis of the technology, and guide its deployment by authorities, the Home Office said in its consultation.

While the BTP will abide by all legal standards when it comes to ethics and privacy, the lack of formal, specific legal basis leaves much to interpretation, which is the concern of human rights groups questioning the legality, safety, and ethics of the technology.

This leaves police forces unsure on how to rollout the technology – in 2020, for instance, the South Wales Police was found to have been using LFR unlawfully due to a lack of indescretion, according to the Court of Appeal.

But the appropriate level of descretion has yet to be laid out in laws or regulation, which brings to question why the rollout is going ahead before findings from the consultation have been published.