Snowden TOP-Secret Documents Reveal how the NSA Searches Voice Calls (+Video)

Snowden TOP-Secret Documents Reveal how the NSA Searches Voice Calls

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.

The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago.

Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community’s “holy grail,” the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

The documents include vivid examples of the use of speech recognition in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Latin America. But they leave unclear exactly how widely the spy agency uses this ability, particularly in programs that pick up considerable amounts of conversations that include people who live in or are citizens of the United States.

What’s more, these do so on an automated and industrial scale, allowing the NSA to monitor larger amounts of the total SIGNIT traffic within a given region. Granted, these transcriptions aren’t perfect — they’re pretty rough in fact — but as NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake explained to The Intercept, “But even if it’s not 100 percent, I can still get a lot more information. It’s far more accessible. I can search against it. The breakthrough was being able to do it on a vast scale.”

Read more here: THE//INTERCEPT
THE COMPUTERS ARE LISTENING
HOW THE NSA CONVERTS SPOKEN WORDS INTO SEARCHABLE TEXT
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/05/nsa-speech-recognition-snowden-searchable-text/

(Image credit: Getty)