Super Recognisers & Prosopagnosics - Who is in your team?

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It is vital for those in command of law enforcement officers, border guards, security at a venue or a CCTV control room to know which of their team suffers from prosopagnosia (face blindness) or which of them are super recognisers.   This is especially the case if your role is to spot criminals or confirm identities. The Association can assist to identify these traits.

From the article: “…sufferers include…actor Brad Pitt, 59, who said prosopagnosia means “so many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them”. According to a study published in the journal Cortex in February, millions of us may have prosopagnosia without even knowing the condition exists. 

 Previously thought to affect between 2 -2.5 per cent of the global population, researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the VA Boston Healthcare System, who administered an online questionnaire and tests to 3,341 individuals, found prosopagnosia might actually affect as many as one in 33 people – 3.03 per cent. 

…At one end are “super recognisers”, who can instantly recall the face of a person they haven’t seen for decades. Then there are those of us who might struggle to put a name to the face of an office colleague outside the context of work. But at the other end, says Dr Shah, are people with extreme proso­pagnosia, “who can’t recognise themselves in photos”.”

See the article here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/scientific-reason-remember-faces-names-prospangnosia/

New Super Recogniser International Research

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Research conducted by the University of New South Wales and other universities has further demonstrated how Super Recognisers can assist law enforcement and border control agencies - especially operationally, where fast decisions are required. The strength and weaknesses of the various methods of identification - SRs, trained forensic examiners and automated systems (referred to a DNNs) and how combining all methods produces excellent results. From the article:

We found that forensic examiners, super-recognizers and DNNs all achieve high accuracy, but each have distinct strengths and weaknesses which make them suited to different real-world face identification roles. Super-recognizers can make decisions quickly and rarely miss targets. Super-recognizers are therefore most suited to time-critical roles where the priority is to avoid false negative errors (misses) in the interests of public safety, such as border control, surveillance, searching for a face in a crowd, and reviewing the output of automated database searches. In these roles, false positive errors—which super-recognizers are prone to making—can often be eliminated quickly by further investigation

NOTE - in the SR system developed by Mike Neville, identifications are researched and peer reviewed. All are also subject to the rigorous identification procedures demanded by the law (in UK, PACE 1984 Code D, Part B).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-28632-x

Tactics to Defeat Computer Facial Recognition

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In this fascinating article, it is clearly shown that a computer only sees a face - it does not know if it is real or not. In this study, an image of a face on a T-shirt was used to trick the computer programme. The Chief Executive of the Association has also witnessed this issue when working with Artificial Intelligence. When a test subject wore a T-shirt depicting the Beatles, the system could not function as it could only deal with one face at a time, but it was seemingly confronted with five - the real face, together with images of John, Paul, George and Ringo!

This is another reason to utilise the skills of HUMAN Super Recognisers to enhance and improve any automated facial recognition. The article can be found at this link:

Attacking Face Recognition With T-Shirts: Database, Vulnerability Assessment, and Detection | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Successful Super Recogniser Covert Exercise Weekend

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Over the weekend 3rd - 4th June, SRI Ltd ran a covert exercise, based on a terrorism scenario in central London. Super Recogniser had to spot the offenders and were then trained in covert surveillance techniques to follow them to identify their target. Students attended from the UK, USA, Germany, Israel, Austria and Bulgaria. Certificates will be presented at the Association Day later in the year.

Feedback was excellent. This is from an Austrian SR:

It was “incredibly exciting and very informative, great atmosphere… Kelly and Mike are wonderful teachers and could explain everything well, the theory in the lessons was easy to understand and important for the future work of a SR…The live exercise was very adrenaline charged, well explained, organized and realistic.”

A further course will be held in the Autumn and the next SR on line course will be held 20nd - 22nd June, where your super recognition skills can be tested and you will learn about the legal issues - surveillance, identification and data protection laws.

Another German Super Recogniser Unit - Rhineland Palatinate

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The German police continue to drive forward the use of human Super Recognisers - the latest police force is in Rhineland-Palatinate, with testing in the capital city, Mainz.

From the article (which has been translated): A test phase with super recognizers in Rhineland-Palatinate has been so promising that this is to become an integral part of the fight against crime in the state. According to the State Office of Criminal Investigation, the Super Recognizers deliver far better facial recognition results than computer programs in some areas. "Super recognizers are able to recognize people even on very poor footage or with significant age-related or other optical changes," said Interior Minister Michael Ebling (SPD). In particular, their use could provide clues as to whether suspects appeared on different images in different contexts of the crime.

https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-pfalz/polizei-rlp-setzt-vermehrt-auf-super-recognizer-und-virtual-reality-100.html

The Need for Super Recognisers - Voter ID

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This article explains that most people are unable to accurately match faces. In the UK, voters now have to produce identification documents, but the many staff at Polling Stations are unable to spot those trying to vote fraudulently. See the article:

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-opinion-people-terrible-photos-polling.html

New South Wales Police - Super Recognisers Spread "Down Under"

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Police in New South Wales are now identifying their human Super Recognisers. The tactic is spreading across Australia, as the Queensland Police have been using them for some time. From the article:

Dr David White noted..."that while artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used for face recognition, human abilities are still superior. Police already use this technology in Australia. When the police are using it for investigation they’ve often got a poor quality image and then use that image to search a massive database – all AI can do is throw up the most faces that are similar. It can’t say definitively that is the same person or not, so this is why we still need humans to make the final call.”

NSW police members face off in mug match test (cosmosmagazine.com)

The Opposite of Super Recognition - Face Blindness!

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This article from The Guardian newspaper covers Face Blindness. But how many law enforcement agencies, borders forces, CCTV Control Rooms and security companies unwittingly employ people with this condition to review images of suspects, monitor surveillance cameras, check passports or compare a face with a security pass allowing access to critical buildings??

‘Sometimes I don’t recognise my own family’: life with face blindness | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian