Super voice recognisers, people with extraordinary abilities to remember and recognise human voices, are out there. And they could potentially transform counter-terrorism and surveillance operations.

People with an exceptional knack for recognising faces seized the zeitgeist over ten years ago, when researchers found that about 2 per cent of the population had such an ability. London’s Metropolitan Police Service later created a specialised unit of officers with this skill, some of whom helped identify suspects caught on …