From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 08:26:49 +0800
To: jimbell@pacifier.com
Subject: Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?
In-Reply-To: <199610061727.KAA18789@mail.pacifier.com>
Message-ID: <199610071256.NAA00126@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jim Bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> writes:
> One thing I wonder is this:  Can the stress indications be removed from a 
> voice-containing signal by some sophisticated DSP processing?  

Not very sophisticated, but cheap current technology:

  high end PC soundcard, dictation software, to convert speech to text,
  then speech synthesis software to put that back into speech.

Of course pauses in speech, and the actual words and positions taken
show through, and these doubtless contain cues, as does body language.

I thought that perhaps speech synthesis (so that you could type) or
both speech recognition, followed by speech synthesis, together with
PGPfone, and a high bandwidth TCP packet `remailer' might be a fun
application.  Plus a gateway back in to the phone system, paid for by
ecash (double blinded ecash).

All doable currently, I think.  With sufficient users of the remailer,
you should be able to get packet lag down, and still converse
relatively interactively anonymously.  Better than a pay phone, your
link could be encrypted to the remailer with a forward secret protocol
(PGPfone is forward secret), even if the recipient was using an
ordinary phone.

Talking about attempting to discover whether politicians are lying
(apart from `at all times by definition'), it seems that even if a
highly accurate lie detector were developed, puppet politicians could
be kept ignorant, and fed the info to discuss, so that they could tell
untruths without knowing they were untruths, and so better pass
analysis.

Also some pathological liars apparently can do well at lie detectors
because they are so used to lying that they can lie with no
compunction.  Successful politicians would be selected from those who
possess such qualities.  (One suspects most are pretty good already,
in any case)

Adam
--
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