They show nine individuals one after the other on a computer screen. They appear silently against a uniform green background for about a minute, turning their heads (presumably at a command). They show you all nine twice and no-one says anything then if you have anything to say you do and they record it. The whole procedure itself is videoed. This obviously beats the old live method by a mile, scoring well on many counts such as cost, accuracy, fairness, safety, etc. I understand that they can choose the control likenesses from a bank of about 25,000 images.
What struck me is that these images were clearly all of different people but so close in look that if I described any one of them I'd describe the others, lacking the vocabulary to distinguish very easily beyond the obvious. It looks like a good, fair system and the officers involved were all careful not to create difficulties by discussing the case, etc. There's a lot more about it here.
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