
Voice-matching technology was developed by MIT/Lincoln Labs under NSA contract [pdf] - staunch
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4351987/2006-01-04-Technology-That-Identifies-People-by.pdf
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rdtsc
Once you can encode the voice characteristics to match it, then go to the next
level and generate the voice so that it sounds like that person. That might be
interesting in breaking ZRTP protocol which relies on verbally comparing codes
both sides see on their ends.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP)

So when Alice calls Bob and they verify the code, she sees "123" and says
"123". Eve captures "123" then used Alice's generated voice and tells Bob the
code is "456". Then does the same for Bob's side. Now, Alice and Bob if they
are suspicious they can try to repeat the code a few times, maybe grouping
digits differently.

~~~
rahimnathwani
According to Wikipedia "In late 2006 the US NSA developed an experimental
voice analysis and synthesis system to defeat this protection"

~~~
rdtsc
Yap they tried but it was experimental. They want something practical. Well
they might have solved the problem but I kind of doubt it.

Notice that instead of a number it could be a set of random dictionary words.
So instead of 123 they get "potato airplane". Now Alice and Bob start making
jokes or comments about how silly that sounds and how far potato airplanes
could fly etc. Now the problem of simply transcribing individual numbers got
many times more complicated.

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etiam
Good to see this is getting attention.

I was hoping this release would as well:
[https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-
techno...](https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-technology-
nsa/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16193246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16193246)

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Zigurd
I'd bet this isn't the first implementation of speaker identification in
surveillance networks, by a couple decades. It has always been easier to
distinguish between speakers than is has been to transcribe speech, or even
recognize isolated words, without training the recognizer to a speaker's
characteristics.

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drharby
Similar thing happened with lens development at the nro and nasa

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Dowwie
If this is accurate, then so too is "my voice is my passport" type of voice
printing authentication.

I need to watch sneakers again..

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rurban
I heard the british counterpart (GCHQ) had better voice matching in those
days.

