
Prisons Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints - jbegley
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/prison-voice-prints-databases-securus/
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torstenvl
First of all, there is _no_ reasonable expectation of privacy in
inmate/confinee calls. The system they use plays a message to that effect at
the beginning of the call. Jail/prison/brig phone calls are routinely
recorded, and prosecutors listen to those phone calls. That's why defense
attorneys will come see you in person. It's also why every once in a while
you'll get an admission or other indications of guilt from someone who doesn't
listen to those warnings.

[http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/26/jailhouse.calls.recordin...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/26/jailhouse.calls.recordings/index.html)

Second, an anecdote. The system they use in my jurisdiction uses phone cards.
We once had a group of confinees switch phone cards to make it difficult to
trace who was speaking (and at the very least introduce reasonable doubt). I
listened to dozens of hours of audio in one case, just hoping for the caller
to identify himself (since the advent of caller ID, it seems a lot of people
just say "Hey"). Voice printing would have been very helpful here.

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AlphaWeaver
I think this is a bit different... This is clearly asking the inmates to utter
phrases with the intent of training a model, with the threat of revoking the
ability to contact loved ones if you don't comply. This isn't being
constructed from the existing phone calls, but specifically targeted action to
collect clean training data.

~~~
torstenvl
The article says the voice prints are used in "a new voice surveillance
system," specifically that "algorithms then draw on these databases to
identify the voices taking part in a call."

I read the other posters concerns about Fourth Amendment protections as
responding to the surveillance use, not to the collection. My post was in
response to my general read of those concerns.

It seems your objection is primarily to the collection of the voice print
itself. Why do you feel like that's different from collecting finger prints?

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sascha_sl
>It seems your objection is primarily to the collection of the voice print
itself. Why do you feel like that's different from collecting finger prints?

Fingerprints are harder to use in electronic mass surveillance.

Databases are easy to combine, the only barrier is often just a legal one
(which is a joke for national security). So I'd like governments to collect as
little of that data as possible.

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polskibus
I wonder if all companies offering free voice calls like Facebook, Google are
collecting voice prints without user consent. I wonder if they offer other
parties a service where input is a recording, output is identified person.

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swebs
Read the ToS when signing up to those things. They're collecting everything
and according to the law, blindly clicking "I agree" counts as consent.

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mtgx
> blindly clicking "I agree" counts as consent

Not in the EU, where the idea of "informed consent" exists within law.

Maybe the US needs better data protection laws, too.

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kaybe
Scratch that 'maybe'.

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pacala
FWIW, customer service of your average corporation is likely to already have
voice fingerprinting in place.

~~~
mediocrejoker
I asked my mobile provider (Rogers) if they had any alternatives to storing my
birth date as my account verification method and they offered to enrol me in
their voice print program. I declined.

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paulie_a
Why not just lie and give them a fake birthday?

It's not like you can't give them false information.

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ams6110
Someone knowing your birthdate isn't really a big deal anyway

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FiveSquared
Social Security, dark web crackers, and crappy online forgotten passwords
websites want to know your location. I jest. But seriously, DOB is extremely
valuable, which is why I never use my real one online except for government
stuff like that.

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renholder
>...such as “multiple inmates speaking to one person on the outside on a
reoccurring basis.”

This sounds like a niche use-case scenario: Inmates that speak to the press.

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vuln
Kingpins in prison yet still running their empire.

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renholder
I would think the kingpin would be outside of prison for that scenario, yeah?
=]

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b_tterc_p
I believe he means literally people in prison but with enough power and
influence to continue to manage operations from within.

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renholder
Aye, the statement was many on the inside to one on the outside, yeah? =] For
the "kingpin" scenario, it would be many on the outside to one on the inside,
right?

(Admittedly, I may be misunderstanding, which is why I'm asking.)

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MrTonyD
The bigger threat that WW3 or Global Warming is pervasive monitoring. Whoever
survives all the other disasters can be completely controlled by whoever has
the ability to monitor everything (and then kill anybody who acts or speaks
against their interest. There is no such thing as resistance when your ability
to resist is detected and monitored.

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viivaux
Currently, you're downvoted to near the bottom, while the top comment is
defending this violation of dignity.

What's going on here; are we that out of touch with this community's values?

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Jill_the_Pill
Maybe they are downvoting because the apocalypse would have destroyed the
physical infrastructure needed for such surveillance? It's sort of dystopia or
the other; you can't have both!

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MrTonyD
Well, if that is their reason for downvoting then they really haven't thought
it through. Pervasive monitoring is pervasive in large part because modern
monitoring sensors are produced by the billions and are incredibly tiny (I'm
talking about custom military stuff - not "spy-warehouse" stuff.) These are
distributed systems and even today they spread their data all over the world
to many huge secret underground bunkers (I know NSA guys who've describe these
to me.) So even today there is a lot more monitoring than people realize. And
this is analogous to the old nuclear first strike logic - if somebody strikes
first then they have won. Once you get full control, your monitoring can't be
fought.

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JimBrimble35
This is interesting. I could see this being used for a sort of Shazam of
anonymized voice data.

You have access to anonymous voice data (from service providers, messaging
services etc.), but you can't connect that data to an individual without
alienating their rights. Something like this could be used to filter that data
for specific voice prints if you have a warrant.

Tinfoil hat take: It won't be long until voice prints are collected and shared
for the majority of the population and connected to individuals via ad
networks. It would be relatively simple for somewhere like Starbucks to
install microphones, cancel out the in-store music, and keyword conversations
for advertising purposes. The time for powerful privacy legislation is now.

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gowld
And if your shoddy tech matches the wrong person and the judge and jury don't
understand the broken tech and tortured statistical model, there's no problem
because everyone in the database is already a known criminal who deserves to
be punished.

~~~
JimBrimble35
Yes. To be clear I think this is a terrible idea, but the appeal of the power
this could wield as an investigative tool will likely outweigh all arguments
against it.

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En_gr_Student
You know, there are illegal cell phones in prisons. If the prison folks have
the ability to determine whose voice is speaking, then they can related an
outgoing cell signal at the prison to a particular incarcerated person.

It would be like a wire-tap without a warrant. Do they need a warrant for
someone already in prison?

It is going to be funny/ironic when the "Social Credit" system in China has
voice-fingerprints of nearly every person under surveillance, so that words
heard by any listening device would be admissible to analysis. They could then
detect someone saying things of folks in power, both in adherence to political
norms, and also in detection of fraud.

Thought-crimes, coming soon.

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gringoDan
This is disturbing. I'm no lawyer or legal expert, but shouldn't this be
contested on 4th Amendement (unreasonable search and seizure) grounds?

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noer
I don't think incarcerated people are afforded that right.

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morganvachon
Their rights are limited, yes, but what about the person on the other end of
the call? I feel this is a gross violation of the 4th amendment rights of
anyone who receives calls from an inmate subject to this program.

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mr_plow
You aren't likely to see any 4th amendment cases brought here because even
when they do investigate crimes with info from prison calls they can easily
use parallel construction to build their case on something that doesn't fall
under the 4th.

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torstenvl
Also because any expectation of privacy you have after hearing "This call may
be recorded" is per se unreasonable, so the Fourth Amendment has no
applicability here.

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mr_plow
Sure but once they start moving into the pen register side of things to
connect the dots between the folks on the other side of a prison phone call
and the second level of connections they create you start to get into some
gray-er areas. It becomes easier to dig through a trash can to find cause for
a warrant than to use the call + pen register data.

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Animats
We need a public database of voice prints of political figures. Not hard; they
talk in public a lot.

Political figures have no expectation of privacy, after all.

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gruez
What's the point of having this, other than to getting petty revenge at "The
Man"? It's not like you control a surveillance system that could use those
voiceprints.

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andy_ppp
You could make a neural network that categorised those who are more likely to
be criminals based on this data.

Big if, but if it was accurate to say 95% would it be moral?

Strange times in which we live.

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roywiggins
I expect it would just categorize all younger men with African American
accents and a gradeschool vocabulary as criminals. 37.1% of 20-to 34-year old
black men without a high school diploma or equivalent are _currently_
incarcerated.

[https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_a...](https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2010/collateralcosts1pdf.pdf)

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andy_ppp
Woah 37% is terrible, good point about the racism it would no doubt match
against...

My real question is as we get better AI systems and more accurate ones should
we use them to make decisions that can affect people in profound ways.

Seems that maybe this is not the right place to discuss something as open
ended and off topic as this!

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Jill_the_Pill
Folks like to think of 1984 as disturbingly prescient, but I think of
Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle often these days. The plot involves the use
of a voiceprint (developed by imprisoned scientists) to identify the speaker
in a bugged phone call. Wouldn't Stalin have loved our technologies of
surveillance?

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EGreg
Well they have to do it quietly or they will mess up the recording :-D

