The Super Recogniser

October 30, 2015 1:45 AM

Friends call Constable Collins Rain Man or Yoda or simply The Oracle. But to Scotland Yard, London’s metropolitan police force, he is known as a “super recognizer.” He has a special gift of facial recall powers that enables him to match even low-quality and partial imagery to a face he has seen before, on the street or in a database and possibly years earlier.[slNYT]
posted by ellieBOA (30 comments total)

Perhaps the inspiration behind Jo Nesbo's forensic head Beate Lonn.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:59 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I fully expect a quiet little story a few years in the future where a high-profile conviction based on this guy's evidence is overturned.

(mebbe I'm a bit jelly 'cos of my mild prosopagnosia. I often only commence the recognition process for people 'cos they make recognizing cues towards me. This has lead to some situations which can only be described as totes awks.)
posted by scruss at 2:09 AM on October 30, 2015 [10 favorites]

Does he drive a special aircraft and capture escaping programs?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:11 AM on October 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

As a prosopagnostic this cheers me immensely. I am delighted to know that he's got what I don't have. He's just like me, only opposite!
posted by Jane the Brown at 2:29 AM on October 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah. On the one hand, cool ability to have, I guess, but there's also a part of me thinking, nope, this is the sort of thing that could lead to some unjust outcomes.
posted by skybluepink at 2:48 AM on October 30, 2015

Or some just ones.
posted by Devonian at 3:06 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Imagine how useful these people would be to a properly totalitarian state rather than just a moderately authoritarian one.
posted by imperium at 3:31 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was standing at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the lights to change, and besides me was a young lady who was so familiar I was certain I must know her. I just couldn't remember where from. Am I being rude? Should I say hi?

It was becoming really uncomfortable, standing there next to her. It became even more uncomfortable when I blurted out 'FOODWORKS!'

She works at the local supermarket where I've been shopping for eight years. She showed me where the anchovies were. I helped her when she smashed a jar of pasta sauce. I see her everyday. But outside the context of the supermarket, not wearing her uniform, absolute stranger.
posted by adept256 at 3:51 AM on October 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

I've been fifteen years in the same industry and most of the companies I work with are clustered around one part of London and have been for years. In my latest job I regularly speak in front of crowds of 500+ and see a lot of the same faces in a work context.

I went to get a sandwich and recognised the woman approaching me, my brain tried to do the panic Guess Who thing, desperately trying to come up with a name as my face did the happy-to-see-you smile and it wasn't until she walked past me that I realised it was Rachel Weisz and we'd never met before.
posted by Molesome at 4:18 AM on October 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

It is the almost hilarious case, but perfectly true, that while the CIA "cousins" use banks of computers in which are stored millions and millions of facial features to try to match up the incoming daily flow of photographs, Britain uses Blodwyn.

An elderly and often ill-used lady, forever harassed by her younger male colleagues for a quick identification, Blodwyn has been in the job forty years and works underneath Sentinel House, where she presides over the huge archive of pictures that make up MI6's "mug book." Not a book at all, it is in fact a cavernous vault where are stored rows and rows of volumes of photographs, of which Blodwyn alone possesses an encyclopedic knowledge.

Her mind is something like the CIA's computer bank, which she can occasionally defeat. In her memory is stored not the tiniest detail of the Thirty Years' War or even the Wall Street stock prices; her mind stores faces. Shapes of noses, lines of jaws, casts of eyes; the sag of a cheek, the curve of a lip, the way a glass or cigarette is held, the glint of a capped tooth in a smile taken in an Australian pub and showing up years later in a London supermarket--all are grist to the mill of her remarkable memory.

(The Fourth Protocol, Frederick Forsyth, 1984.)

Accordingly, I will continue to rely on mid-80s spy novels for my knowledge of the world.
posted by stebulus at 4:37 AM on October 30, 2015 [12 favorites]

Previously from June, though with a different article.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:50 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Someday I'll write my own detective novel in which a handsome detective (a thinly-veiled self-portrait, of course) with mild prosopagnosia (thanks, scuss, for that awesome word) is able to use his amazing powers of deduction, along with social engineering, to navigate daily life.

A woman approaches him. Does he know her? She's nicely dressed, but her hair is not brushed; maybe she had to dash out of the house? There's a Jolly Rancher stick to her calf; she must have young children. Does my child go to school with her child? Her boots are scuffed with a particular shade of mud that's only found in the Happy Kidz Play Space, and there's glitter stuck to her elbow; maybe from a craft play date? She's definitely a mom. He tries a soft approach: "Looks like good weather for the Hallowe'en parade." She smiles wearily and responds, "I just hope that Claire doesn't trip on her costume." Claire. Claire? His daughter plays with someone called Claire, and so he hazards another line, "My daughter's excited about the birthday party. When is it again?"

I haven't worked out all the details, but it's sure to be a best-seller.
posted by math at 5:20 AM on October 30, 2015 [12 favorites]

My wife could do this. We went to a New Years party a couple years ago and met someone while we were taking off our coats and my wife started saying that she knew this woman from someplace, the woman was saying probably not, my wife insisting, the woman saying "really, I don't think so." It's bugging the hell out of my wife for the rest of the evening...later we find out that the woman is the actress Maria Doyle Kennedy and my wife recognised her as one of the backup singers from The Commitments movie (1991).
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:33 AM on October 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have a strong visual memory--I can see an image once or twice and it lives in my brain afterwards. Faces, signs, paintings, photos of concentration camps--it's not always a blessing.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:02 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

My father met me from a train at a rural station in Devon. As we carried my bags to the car we happened to run into a friend. He greeted us warmly, we greeted him. We spoke of warm human things for about five minutes.

Slowly it dawned on us that we were mistaken. We did not know each other.

We all shuffled away with a clear, unambiguous commitment to give best wishes to people who don't exist.

And a firm promise to die if we ever met again. (No-one said this, but english, so, no need.)

Summing up: If any fucker pretends to have supernatural ability to match faces, I will need to see a five-sigma blind test. From at least 100 "supersnoopers."

And then I'll ban them all for being un-english.
posted by Combat Wombat at 6:25 AM on October 30, 2015 [16 favorites]

The existence of these people shows what machines will ultimately be able to do -- and it will be the end of anonymity in public.
posted by jamjam at 6:54 AM on October 30, 2015

Double is it not?
posted by longbaugh at 7:13 AM on October 30, 2015

Well, longbaugh, not everyone can immediately recognize a post they've seen before.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:35 AM on October 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

It's not clear from the article whether Constable Collins is actually offering testimony in court based on his alleged powers of recognition or simply providing leads to police investigators. I hope it is just the latter.
posted by straight at 7:44 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I bet I could fool him.

I get that second take of recognition and "Hey, [Joe/ Neil/ Jude/ Mickey/ Bulldog/ Tonight/ Nineteen]*, howyadoon?" from total strangers, like every day, and have done for decades. Specs, shades, hats, hair and beard changes -- all have no effect.

It's genetic. I was born with a familiar face.


*None of these are, in fact, my IRL name.
posted by Herodios at 8:46 AM on October 30, 2015

Herodios: Ah, yes, the doppelganger phenomenon. I'm personally aware of 12 other people that look almost exactly like me. Having seen The Matrix; my working theory is that, yes the universe is a simulation, and I'm just a background software NPC. Oh well.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 8:50 AM on October 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Hmm. May be.

I'll add that the effect is multi-continental and multi-lingual, as well as multi-decade.

I may have to move to Beijing. Or Lagos. Or 40 Eridani A.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:00 AM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've lived in the same city for 38 years and can instantly recognize if I'm driving down a street that I've never been on before. I'm horrible with addresses and street names though, so I can never tell you the street/block a shop is at but I can tell you exactly how to get there and what the street looks like. Same with faces/names; I'll spot a person in a crowd that I haven't seen or thought of in 20 years but it takes me all day and/or a trip to my highschool yearbook to come up with their name. It's both a blessing and curse.
posted by bizwank at 9:20 AM on October 30, 2015

I know an outside-salesman with this ability. Talk to a guy once for a couple minutes 10 years ago and he can pick them out of a crowd and detail name, occupation, project etc. It was mind blowing the second time I talked to him.

Ray claimed to have this ability for noses on Due South.
posted by Mitheral at 10:11 AM on October 30, 2015

What's it called when strangers are constantly insisting they recognize me when we've never met before, because that's what I have.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 10:13 AM on October 30, 2015

After nascar made it such that only millionaires who followed templates were allowed to build race rigs, my dad took his experience blue printing engines and became a salesman to machine shops. He is one of those people that remembers everyone, and the pertinent data about them. I've seen him run into someone he hasn't seen in twenty years, and be able to ask after their mom and kids and business, all by name. It's astonishing. I can't remember someone after I'm not looking at them, nine times out of ten, so I've long felt that to have this database always accessible in your brain must be amazing.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 11:42 AM on October 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

> "As a prosopagnostic this cheers me immensely. I am delighted to know that he's got what I don't have. He's just like me, only opposite!"

I, however, plan to become his arch-nemesis.

Just as soon as I can figure out how to weaponize my inability to recognize faces.
posted by kyrademon at 11:52 AM on October 30, 2015

Maybe it will make you immune to basilisks?
posted by tavella at 12:59 PM on October 30, 2015

Also, my yellow lab could do this with anyone who ever gave her a treat. For the rest of her life.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:58 PM on October 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anecdote from my High School History teacher: he went through Checkpoint Charlie as a Canadian tourist visiting East Berlin from West Berlin back in the Cold War days. In the processing queue there was a weird-looking rumpled old intelligence officer with buggy eyes who just stared really hard at everyone's passport for several minutes..
posted by ovvl at 4:29 PM on October 30, 2015