Enthusiastic netizen to the rescue

April 18, 2021 8:24 AM

“I’ve got a very weird hobby, which is I love taking a look at photos and figuring out where they’re taken,” Mr. Kuo said. (NYT link)

Unable to locate Mr. Compean through the photo’s metadata — he had disabled his cellphone’s location settings — the authorities disseminated it on social media, where it eventually landed on the radar of the Twitter user @ai6yrham, [Benjamin Kuo] according to Sgt. John Gilbert, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

The user, whose Twitter bio identifies him as a ham radio operator named Ben, responded to the Sheriff’s Department call for assistance on Tuesday morning with a thread that included satellite images and predicted the missing hiker’s coordinates. He wrote in a post that he had made sure to forward his predictions to the authorities.

Later that afternoon, Mr. Compean was located by rescuers, safe with no known injuries, in Angeles National Forest.

“I think, at least for our team, we haven’t had anything exactly like this,” Sergeant Gilbert said of the user’s assistance.

You will not be surprised to learn that Mr. Kuo's Twitter posts (on ham radio, fires, extreme weather, pandemic statistics, and cute animals) are delightful. A couple related to the hiker:

Okay, since I *am* actually getting questions on if I heard about the guy on Twitter who helped find a lost hiker (am I that quiet?) yes, this is me. CBS, ABC, NBC, LA Times, NY Times, NPR, Inside Edition, Good Morning America etc

I'm not generally retweeting articles on myself, but I do have to say it's an odd thing to see coverage in Hong Kong. (apparently I'm an "enthusiastic netizen" in this story per Google Translate)

Bonus NYT links:

Pandemic Wilderness Explorers Are Straining Search and Rescue
As Hiking Surges During the Pandemic, So Do Injuries

posted by medusa (13 comments total)

You realize there's something kinda cool but quirky that you enjoy doing, and you make it into a hobby. You work on it, just for fun, in your free time. You get good at it.

And then comes the day when the very exact unusual skill you've developed is exactly what's needed to save a guy's life.

This story needs a "this is my moment" meme.
posted by meese at 8:30 AM on April 18, 2021 [18 favorites]

What's not explained in the NYT coverage is how Mr. Kuo did it, exactly. Did he search for other photos in Angeles National Forest + study topography maps, or was he just familiar with the area? Since this is his "hobby" I imagine it involved more than just looking at the photo and saying "oh yeah, I've been there before."
posted by anhedonic at 8:42 AM on April 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

anhedonic, good question. Per Digital Photography Review,

A radio operator, Benjamin Kuo, saw the post and went to work. By Tuesday morning, Kuo had compiled a Twitter thread of detailed maps and used 3D terrain information to determine where he thought Compean had captured his photo. Kuo sent the images and the coordinates to the authorities, and Compean was located that afternoon in Angeles National Forest with no apparent injuries.

Here's the Twitter thread.
posted by medusa at 8:53 AM on April 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

This twitter thread gives more info about Kuo's methodology.
posted by zamboni at 8:58 AM on April 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

If you like this kind of thing, there's a browser game called GeoGuesser that drops you somewhere in the world and you figure out where based on context cues.
posted by Miko at 10:30 AM on April 18, 2021 [9 favorites]

Cool story; I actually like doing the same thing, albeit on a much lesser level. I like finding where a photo or video that catches my eye was taken is on Google street view; it’s actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it, as long as you have a little info to narrow down your search area. For example, an attorney advertising on TV here featured a testimonial from a client who said he was injured at a particular intersection; although the business signs were all blurred out in the ad I was able to figure out it was at the intersection of Forest Drive and Beltline Boulevard in Columbia, South Carolina. Which is 70 miles away in another state, disabusing me of any notion the attorney was a local guy giving everyone who called his personal attention.
posted by TedW at 10:31 AM on April 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I feel we have done this here on the blue, am I wrong?
posted by mumimor at 10:39 AM on April 18, 2021

This is how I felt watching Painting with John because it makes it clear he's on an "unspecified" Caribbean island, but there's so much footage of the area and he drops hints like talking about how locals call possums "manicou."

Pretty sure he's in Trinidad and Tobago, based on looking at photos and finding out locals definitely call possums "manicou."
posted by deadaluspark at 10:49 AM on April 18, 2021

there's a browser game called GeoGuesser that drops you somewhere in the world and you figure out where based on context cues

And endless hours of let's plays on Youtube and Twitch if you want to see people doing it.
posted by bonehead at 10:50 AM on April 18, 2021

There's a community of OSINT researchers, some amateur some not, who do this regularly on Twitter as part of a fun quiz.

#mondayquiz
#tuesdayquiz
#wednesdayquiz
#thursdayquiz
#fridayquiz

Also see bellingcat, who offers workshops on this.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 10:59 AM on April 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

And don't forget to follow the verification quiz bot.

Join us and verify yourself through a little series of quizzes that we post daily on Twitter. Learn about the main tools and collaborate with others.

It's a welcoming community of researchers.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 11:12 AM on April 18, 2021

I highly recommend following Ben on twitter for all things related to SoCal disaster preparedness, especially during fire season. His posts are great, and he also retweets a lot of useful info.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:37 PM on April 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

If they'd posted it on a uh newspaper site behind that paywall, no one would've ever seen it and the hiker would have remained lost forever. Ugh.

But I'm glad he was found.
posted by limeonaire at 8:39 PM on April 18, 2021