At 1:34 PM -0800 12/1/99, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
>>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 15:18:43 -0500
>>To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
>>
>>CyberWire Dispatch // (c) Copyright 1999 // November 30
>>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Precedence: bulk
>>X-Loop: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>Jacking in from the "Sticks and Stones" Port:
...
>>
>>Two important reports to the European Parliament, in 1998 and 1999, and
>>Nicky Hager's 1996 book "Secret Power" reveal that the NSA intercepts
>>international faxes and emails. At the time, this revelation upset a great
>>number of people, no doubt including the European companies which lost
>>competitive tenders to American corporations not long after the NSA found
>>its post-Cold War "new economy" calling: economic espionage.
>>
>>Voice telephone calls, however, well, that is another story. Not even the
>>world's most technically advanced spy agency has the ability to do massive
>>telephone interception and automatically massage the content looking for
>>particular words, and presumably topics. Or so said a comprehensive recent
>>report to the European Parliament.
>>
>>In April 1999, a report commissioned by the Parliament's Office of
>>Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA), concluded that
>>"effective voice 'wordspotting' systems do not exist" and "are not in use".
I wonder about the European Parliament. They sometimes make our
Congress look intelligent. The existence of speech recognition
technology is hardly a secret. It's been on the market for years, has
been improving steadily and is now being offered commercially for
similar applications. I don't know how effective it is right now at
telephone monitoring, but it will only get better. Here is an excerpt
from one vendor's web site:
http://www.dragonsystems.com/products/audiomining/
"New AudioMining Technology Uses Award-Winning Speech Recognition
Engine to Quickly Capture and Index Information Contained in Recorded
Video Footage, Radio Broadcasts, Telephone Conversations, Call Center
Dialogues, Help Desk Recordings, and More
New advanced technology to retrieve specified information contained
in hours of recorded video footage, radio and television broadcasts,
telephone conversations, call center dialogues, help desk
recordings, and more, was demonstrated today by Dragon Systems, Inc.
of Newton, Mass. ...
The Dragon Systems AudioMining technology converts audio data into
searchable text, which is easily accessible by keyword searching.
This new capability which eliminates the need to listen to hours of
recordings to find necessary information, can save time and increase
productivity. It gives users immediate random access to recorded
materials and enables them to access material using its speech
content. "
Dragon lists Law Enforcement as one of the potential applications.
I also wonder about stories like this one that might be summarized as
"Large Government Agency with multi-billion dollar budget for
monitoring communications is suspected of monitoring communications."
I remember a story told during the cold war about some reporters in
Moscow who got together for New Year's Eve in one of their hotel
rooms. During the evening someone offered a toast to the poor KGB
operatives who missed out on the holiday celebrations because they
had to work monitoring their conversations. A short while later the
phone rang. The person who picked it up heard the pop of a cork, the
gurgle of a drink being poured and then the caller hung up.
Yes, they really are listening.
Arnold Reinhold
