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Excerpt from www.wired.com
Network Rail did not answer questions about the trials sent by WIRED, including questions about the current status of AI usage, emotion detection, and privacy concerns.
“We take the security of the rail network extremely seriously and use a range of advanced technologies across our stations to protect passengers, our colleagues, and the railway infrastructure from crime and other threats,” a Network Rail spokesperson says. “When we deploy technology, we work with the police and security services to ensure that we’re taking proportionate action, and we always comply with the relevant legislation regarding the use of surveillance technologies.”
It is unclear how widely the emotion detection analysis was deployed, with the documents at times saying the use case should be “viewed with more caution” and reports from stations saying it is “impossible to validate accuracy.” However, Gregory Butler, the CEO of data analytics and computer vision company Purple Transform, which has been working with Network Rail on the trials, says the capability was discontinued during the tests and that no images were stored when it was active.
