RE: New NSA patent explicity mentions machine transcription

[Fisher Mark <fisherm@tce.com>]

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>    "One of the holy grails of the NSA is the ability automatically to
>    search through voice traffic. They would have expended considerable
>    effort on this capability, and this indicates it has been
>    fruitful," he said.

I guess I'm amazed by how amazed others are that this could be done.  Once
you have speech-to-text for multiple speakers working, the rest of the job
could be handled by commercial search products like Verity.  I'd go so far
as to suspect that speech-to-text for multiple speakers could be handled now
by anyone in a brute-force manner, which is a manner certainly within the
NSA's capabilities.

Anyone that is security-conscious that talks about subjects they don't want
the NSA to know about over an unsecured line deserves what they get.  Think
of it as evolution in action...
==========================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher          Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com          Indianapolis, IN
"Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is
'Don't Tread on Me'"