NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

a reply to: andy06shake

Wasn't that Biggie Smalls?

Gonna try that!

*protecting nether regions*

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: MystikMushroom

Trust me you count, we all count, the habits of consumers, counts, that is the data mine part of it, because they also collect data for propaganda advertisement among many others targets that can be sold

Oh, I am certainly aware of that angle to it. I'm not worried for myself, as I don't watch commercials or listen to the radio. Occasionally I do see how data collection tries to "coerce" buying habits and I have to shake my head at the clumsy and overt nature of it.

The scary thing? It seems to work on the masses. I see people lining up to buy the newest "this" or "that". I see people going nuts over this brand of X and not Y. The masses gobble this stuff up and behave like memes.

So, I'm not worried about mass data collection for myself -- I can handle that just fine.

originally posted by: WeAre0ne
a reply to: jimmyx

Here is one for you... LEDs can be used as cameras (kinda). So perhaps those LED displays and TVs are doubling as cameras and we don't realize it.

Turning LEDs Into A Camera

hmmm...Light emitting diodes into cameras?....there has to be other components to it, or, I've been out of the loop too long. feeling old now.....talk about old.....I went and saw the film "X Machina" the other day, the stark reality that A.I. is inevitable was brought home to me watching it.....glad I'm going to be long gone, before we humans are considered antiquated meat vessels

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Is funny how our hunger for technology and latest gadgets is giving the right to the government and private companies to test and use on us the latest spying toys. Without coercion from the government we has given freely our rights to privacy.

a reply to: marg6043

True, and in a way I don't really care. I'm not going to be on Earth forever, I may as well enjoy life and the cool technology while I'm here.

Life becomes pretty dark, dull and uninteresting if you're constantly paranoid and in fear.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

That is my motto, we have one life to live, let make the best of it, is not need to worry about what goes on, live life on your own time.

I'm most of the time the happiest person around, it works wonders on the blood pressure, I feel amused by those that seems to be mad and angry all the time.

a reply to: marg6043

Here's one:

"Paranoia will destroy ya"

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: MystikMushroom

Trust me you count, we all count, the habits of consumers, counts, that is the data mine part of it, because they also collect data for propaganda advertisement among many others targets that can be sold

Yes, and it hit ATS.

The other night, I kid you not, I was reading a post of two people commenting on Call of Duty. I then went to the forum page and lo and behold, there was an advert for Call of Duty.

I kid you not, it happened.

a reply to: WarminIndy

Your are absolutely right, if you browse in the net, pause on a particular page to check on some item for sale, once you exit you will be bombarded by "Choice Ad", with similar items for sale, is part of Google Ads, that for most part I keep off, but sometimes I need them open in the browser.

a reply to: wasaka

Haven't they been monitoring spoken words for decades already? As in, Carnivore? It might be easier now, but it isn't new. Of course, it's a moot point. If they decide someone is a threat, and they have nothing to show, they can fabricate "evidence" easily.

originally posted by: WeAre0ne
Funny they call it "Google for voice" because with Google you can create a free "Google Voice" account, and you will get a free phone number which you can then use to forward calls to any of your real phone numbers. You also get a Google voicemail, which will transcribe the voice messages into text and send it to you in email if you ever miss a call, which you can then search for. Pretty much the same tech that NSA is talking about.

So, the "Google Voice" (formerly, Grand Central) was one
of the technologies the CIA/NSA hoped would be refined
and indeed it has been. As I recall, Google got investment
capital from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA.

www.forbes.com...

BTW--Grand Central had a feature where you could record
your conversations without the other party knowing, but
when Google bought the company that feature was quickly
turned off.

originally posted by: N3k9Ni
I don't think there's much to worry about as far as transcribing phone calls to text. I have a Google voice account that attempts to transcribe phone messages to text. Most times the text is so unintelligible that I have no idea what the message is without listening to the actual recording.

The word used doesn't matter, it's more about groups of sounds appearing in relation to each other, combined with particular meta data that can identify topics to find people of interest.. Provided the software is transcribing speech the same way it's pretty much irrelevant.

originally posted by: WeAre0ne
a reply to: jimmyx

Here is one for you... LEDs can be used as cameras (kinda). So perhaps those LED displays and TVs are doubling as cameras and we don't realize it.

No. They don't have lenses to form an image, which is why this "hack" is nothing but a light sensor. Also, while you can make a crappy photodiode out of an LED, it's impossible to both light the LED and read ambient light levels at the same time.

I think I have heard this before, nearly ten years ago...

here...

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
I'll say this once again...

The NSA is buried under an avalanche of data to the point where it's paralyzed. Right now, the predictive computational power isn't available to make use of the information. The information is only valuable if you have a specific person of interest, or want to investigate someone after they commit a crime.

The NSA suffers from the "False Positive Paradox"

The false positive paradox is a statistical result where false positive tests are more probable than true positive tests, occurring when the overall population has a low incidence of a condition and the incidence rate is lower than the false positive rate. The probability of a positive test result is determined not only by the accuracy of the test but by the characteristics of the sampled population

Here's an example using the fictional "Super AIDS" to demonstrate how the false positive paradox works:

Say you have a new disease, called Super-AIDS. Only one in a million people gets Super-AIDS. You develop a test for Super-AIDS that's 99 percent accurate. I mean, 99 percent of the time, it gives the correct result -- true if the subject is infected, and false if the subject is healthy. You give the test to a million people.

One in a million people have Super-AIDS. One in a hundred people that you test will generate a "false positive" -- the test will say he has Super-AIDS even though he doesn't. That's what "99 percent accurate" means: one percent wrong. What's one percent of one million? 1,000,000/100 = 10,000 One in a million people has Super-AIDS. If you test a million random people, you'll probably only find one case of real Super-AIDS. But your test won't identify one person as having Super-AIDS. It will identify 10,000 people as having it. Your 99 percent accurate test will perform with 99.99 percent inaccuracy.

That's the paradox of the false positive. When you try to find something really rare, your test's accuracy has to match the rarity of the thing you're looking for. If you're trying to point at a single pixel on your screen, a sharp pencil is a good pointer: the pencil-tip is a lot smaller (more accurate) than the pixels. But a pencil-tip is no good at pointing at a single atom in your screen. For that, you need a pointer -- a test -- that's one atom wide or less at the tip.

Here is an application to terrorism:

Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists, maybe up to ten. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent, one twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare. Now, say you have software that can sift through all the bank-records, or toll-pass records, or public transit records, or phone-call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to investigate two hundred thousand innocent people.

Wikipedia

Yeah, it's mostly just for targeting individuals and specific organizations, unless specific triggers are activated. The data can also be used by 3rd parties though, and they may have specific targets as well.

Most surveillance programs don't actually give a crap what we do, say, or type. There's way too much data for them to go after everyone even if they have mildly prosecutable data. Now if one of us becomes a rebel leader or a notorious revolutionary economist, then we'd need to worry. Because they'd comb through any collected data about us and any person or organization affiliated with us, to find data for entrapment.

The USA Freedom Act — the surveillance reform bill that Congress is currently debating — doesn’t address the topic at all. The bill would end an NSA program that does not collect voice content: the government’s bulk collection of domestic calling data, showing who called who and for how long.

OP Source

Pointing it out because it needs to be addressed concerning the "The USA Freedom Act -H.R. 3361/ S. 1599"

More on it here. Well, what it claims to be.

The bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee on April 30, 2015

wiki

Well, you know how it goes. This kind of "news". By the time you hear about it, it probably happened a decade ago, at least.

I've always been suspicious of Snowden. Really. What has he told us we couldn't already guess? About the only thing he's done that would have been difficult to do any other way was he managed to get the public to actually think about this stuff. But that could really come back to bite us in the ass because you know how it goes with the public. They have the attention span of a gnat. You could tell them the world is going to end in an hour and they'd forget it in five minutes and be talking about Miley's butt again (or whatever it is today).

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
I've always been suspicious of Snowden. Really. What has he told us we couldn't already guess? About the only thing he's done that would have been difficult to do any other way was he managed to get the public to actually think about this stuff.

Snowden didn't tell us new information, he did something of even greater impact. He provided actual proof that everything people thought was going on was. From a legal standpoint there is a massive difference between what you accuse someone of and what you can prove someone guilty of. Snowden proved allegations that have been made for over a decade. That is a very big deal.

Also, while the general public has been largely clueless as to what Snowden revealed those in the know such as the tech industry have responded. It has lead to new security practices and new issues from corporate lobbyists. It has also caused members of congress to come forward and reveal where they stand on such things.

originally posted by: Aazadan
Snowden didn't tell us new information, he did something of even greater impact. He provided actual proof that everything people thought was going on was. From a legal standpoint there is a massive difference between what you accuse someone of and what you can prove someone guilty of. Snowden proved allegations that have been made for over a decade. That is a very big deal.

.........

Also, while the general public has been largely clueless as to what Snowden revealed those in the know such as the tech industry have responded. It has lead to new security practices and new issues from corporate lobbyists. It has also caused members of congress to come forward and reveal where they stand on such things.

And if there is another big terrorist attack no one will remember any of this and anyone who wants to keep their job will keep quiet about it. Just like they did after 9/11.

How many years was it before we had a Snowden? And how do we know he isn't controlled opposition? How do we know the government doesn't WANT us to know what they're doing? Controlled leaks are not really that damaging when the people who run things like the NSA are all replaceable. One guy can take responsibility for everything and resign and the whole thing starts all over.

a reply to: wasaka

Don't get me wrong, I think Snowden is a hero, but this about NSA is old old news.

Snowden should give us something really juicy.

But then US would probably pay Russians few billion to turn him over.