Although we already know that NSA relies on fingerprints and facial images to identify targets, according to an institutional document in 2008, voiceprint is “the dominance of the NSAâ€.
In the most severe period of the Cold War in the United States and the Soviet Union, it was the winter of 1980. The FBI agent recorded a call—a man was arranged to have a secret meeting with the Soviet ambassador in Washington, DC. However, on the day of the appointment, the agents of the Bureau of Investigation did not see who entered the embassy. At the time, the agents had no way to find out his name based solely on his voice, so the spy was able to continue hiding his identity and sold the details of some US secrets to the Soviet Union over the next five years.
It was not until 1985, based on information provided by a Russian defector, that the FBI finally determined that the caller was former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst Ronald Pelton. The following year, Ronald Pelton was sentenced to espionage.
Today, FBI and NSA agents can identify his true identity within a few seconds of Pelton's first call to the Soviet Union. The NSA's January 2006 confidential memo showed that NSA analysts used a "sound-to-speech technology" to successfully match Pelton's previous audio files to phone monitoring. The memo describes: "If this technology has been in existence for 20 years, it will be able to detect Pelton's espionage and arrest it in advance, which will greatly reduce Pelton's significant damage to national security."
The confidential documents provided by former NSA employee Snowden show that NSA develops technology that not only turns private conversations into text, but also automatically identifies people in the conversation.
Americans often use this technique called voiceprint recognition when they wake up Amazon's Alexa or call the bank. But long before the language instructions such as "Hello Siri" and "OK Google" entered the homes of ordinary people, the NSA used this voiceprint recognition technology to monitor terrorists, politicians, drug lords, spies and even some ordinary people. Employees of government agencies.
The principle of this technique is to analyze the unique physical and behavioral characteristics of the individual's voice to distinguish the voices of different people, such as the pitch of the vocalization, the shape of the mouth, the length of the pharynx, and so on. The algorithm then creates a dynamic computer model of the individual's sound characteristics, also known as the "soundprint" model. The whole process—capturing the words, translating them into voiceprints, and comparing that representation to other “soundprints†in the database—can be done in an instant. Although we already know that NSA relies on fingerprints and facial images to identify targets, according to an institutional document in 2008, voiceprint is "the dominance of the NSA."
We can easily see the reason. The NSA, whether licensed or not, intercepted calls from millions of US citizens, including transoceanic, video, and Internet calls, creating an unparalleled voiceprint library. The files from Snowden show that after the analysts have provided some people's recordings to the voiceprint recognition algorithm, even if these people use unknown numbers, secret codes or different languages ​​in other calls, the algorithm can The existing audio matches.
As early as Iraq’s freedom of movement, analysts used voiceprint recognition technology to confirm that the “records of Saddam’s leader who was suspected of being deposed†were indeed Saddam’s own, not as forged as the public thought. The NSA's memorandum further indicates that NSA analysts have built voiceprints for this bin Laden. “In a few broadcasts, his voices are very clear and consistentâ€; with Al Qaeda's current leader Ayman al-Zawahri and Al Qaeda The three-handed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is significantly different. They also used Zarqawi's voiceprint to find him from several online audio releases.
According to confidential documents from 2004 to 2012, the NSA has made more complex iterations of its voiceprint recognition technology. The document confirms that voiceprint recognition is used in both anti-terrorist operations and anti-drug operations. The document also recommends that more state agencies deploy this technology, not only to trace espionage like Pelton, but also to prevent whistle-blowers like Snowden.
Algorithm that is always listening
(On March 4, 2015, a man leaned on a smartphone at a public phone booth in New York)
Some civil rights experts worry that voiceprint recognition technology and the extended application of the technology will infringe citizens' privacy. "The voiceprint recognition technology has created a new intelligence capability, an ability that is easily abused," explains TImothy Edgar, a former director of the White House National Intelligence Agency. "Our voice replaces us through various channels to complete communication. In the age of mass surveillance, this ability has a profound impact on the privacy of all of us."
Edgar and other experts point out that the relative stability of vocals makes it difficult to change or disguise compared to names, addresses, passwords, phone numbers, and personal identification numbers. According to Jamie Williams, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Electronic FronTIer FoundaTIon), this makes tracking "easy." "As long as you can identify someone's voice," she said, "you can find them in the monitor record or recording."
Sound is a unique and easily accessible biometric: unlike DNA, it can be passively collected and is not limited by distance, without the need to know or obtain their consent. Although the accuracy of the recognition is similar to the radio conditions, in a controlled environment—low ​​noise floor, familiar acoustic environment, and good communication quality—this technique can be accurately matched in a few sentences. personal. The more different sound samples of the same person owned by the computer model, the more powerful the model becomes, and the more mature it is.
In the business environment, voiceprint recognition technology is closely related to call center fraud review, voice assistant conversations such as Siri, and personal banking password verification. And the use of this technology is growing, according to market research firm TracTIca, by 2024, the revenue of the voice biometric technology industry is expected to reach $5 billion a year, and its use will extend to border checkpoints, medical care, and credit card payments. And in wearable devices.
One of the main concerns of civil libertarians is that voiceprint recognition technology has the potential to "cool down" conversations. Trevor Timm, executive director of the Press Freedom Foundation, pointed out that NSA's voiceprint recognition technology could be used to track journalists, expose sources, and block anonymous messages. Although people now know that they should encrypt their phones when dealing with sensitive materials, Timm points out that there are so many channels for secretly recording sounds from TVs to headsets to Internet devices. Timm said that we carry a microphone with us 24 hours a day, that is our mobile phone. We know that the government has a way to break into mobile phones and computers to turn on these microphones.
He continued, "Despite the great changes in legislation after Snowden’s leak, the American people still have only one-sided understanding of the tools that the government uses to monitor millions of people around the world. This is a worthwhile The debate in the public sphere.†But he pointed out that if the public lacks a meaningful understanding of the use of technology, this debate will be very difficult – even if it exists, it is debatable.
A former defense intelligence official could not discuss confidential documents due to policy restrictions. An Intercept said anonymously that he believes that this technology has always been hidden. “The government avoids discussing this technology because it raises some serious questions that the government is not willing to answer,†the official said. “This is an important shift in our personal and our rights since the events of 9/11.†And to get into the scope of technical monitoring, officials pointed out, “You don’t have to do anything, just talk and talk.â€
Civil rightsists worry that if there is no open discussion and supervision of the government's secret collection of our voice patterns, we may enter an increasingly silent world.
New sound tool
(October 9, 2012, Boulder, Colorado, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Institute of Speech (NIST) Building)
Beginning in 2013, Americans already knew that NSAs were collecting large amounts of phone data from home and abroad, but the technology of how to turn raw data into useful information is still little known. In 2015, according to The Intercept, the NSA established a series of “human language technologies†to handle the large amount of audio collected by the government. Automatically translate speech into text through development programs - what analysts call "voice-based Google" - government departments can use keywords and "selectors" to search, read, and index recordings instead of sending people to listen Save a lot of manpower.
Voiceprint recognition technology derived from voice-to-text items provides analysts with an additional tool that can intercept and classify countless theater audio. The NSA and the Department of Defense have invested heavily in developing this technology and increasing its reliability. Prior to the digital age, voiceprint recognition was part of forensic science. During World War II, human analysts compared the visual output of the sound frequencies from the radio. According to Harry Hollien, author of The Voiceprint Recognition of the Court, these machines that can “read the voiceâ€â€”that is, the spectrogram technique—are even used to refute the rumors that Adolf Hitler was assassinated and replaced.
As the federal leader in the standardization of voiceprint recognition in the court, James Voiceman, chief voiceprint recognition expert, explained: "The voiceprint can be seen," he pointed out, although the word "soundprint" has been used by commercial companies, but In fact, it is somewhat misleading. Because "printing" means that the information captured is physical, not behavioral. He said: "In fact, what you have is an equation in the software program that can output different numbers."
These equations have evolved from simple averaging to dynamic algorithm models. Since its reliance in 1996, the NSA has funded the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Institute of Speech (NIST) to develop and test "the most dominant and promising algorithms for solving voiceprint recognition problems." Also working with NIST is the leading biometrics companies and researchers, some of whom have received funding from the NSA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The NSA has been ignoring its voiceprint recognition project, so it is difficult for the public to know how much it can currently play. But given the close links between NSA-funded academic institutions and private companies, what is being done in other countries and what the vendors are selling can roughly estimate the progress of the NSA.
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