Police wasted £320,000 scanning half a million faces in London rail trial that produced ZERO arrests

From the Newshound archive · first published 30 September 2026 · last updated 1 October 2026.

British Transport Police spent £320,786 and nearly 100 hours of officers' time running facial recognition cameras at London's busiest railway stations for six months — and made zero arrests. The single alert the system produced was a false positive, meaning not one wanted suspect was correctly identified among the more than 500,000 faces the technology scanned from February to July.

Despite the poor results, BTP has extended the trial by four months and expanded it to London Underground stations.

Civil liberties group Big Brother Watch said millions of Londoners were subjected to a 'digital police line-up' during their commute without even realising it.