The Computers are listening:How the NSA converts spoken words into text

[Seaniebawn]

Came across this article today, titled 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/

Detailing the NSA ability to do rough transcription of phone call's and dump into a searchable format,

from the article

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.