1996-08-10 - Re: Massively parallel carbon-unit-based voice pattern matching

Header Data

From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
To: Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com>
Message Hash: 98c51480a60dfde481f0db4ab48fc8409a24bf4df928bb874be760e24298eb0a
Message ID: <199608092330.QAA26402@mail.pacifier.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1996-08-10 01:32:34 UTC
Raw Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 09:32:34 +0800

Raw message

From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 09:32:34 +0800
To: Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com>
Subject: Re: Massively parallel carbon-unit-based voice pattern matching
Message-ID: <199608092330.QAA26402@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 02:54 PM 8/9/96 -0700, Ernest Hua wrote:
>Now what if the FBI had voice detection systems just like the ones
>used in "Clear and Present Danger"?  Now THERE'S a good reason for
>tapping 1% of every phone switch ...
>
>I wonder if the public would mind having a MACHINE do drift net
>matching on voices on all public phone switches in the U.S. just to
>find the Olympic bomber ...  What if the specifications of that
>machine were made public and the machine placed under Congressional
>oversight?  (At least members of Congress would never get tapped.)

Voiceprints used to be doable only with sophisticated, specialized 
equipment.  Presumably, they would be doable today with "only" a PC and 
soundcard, along with some software.  This raises an interesting question:  
Would it be possible to modify speech to remove the identifiable 
characteristics which came from the speaker, and replace them with those of 
some other person.  

In other words, could somebody fake a bomb threat using a recording which 
has been processed to sound "exactly" like some famous person whose voice 
you can analyze?  


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com





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