Voice Biometrics Helps Uncover Terror Plot in Europe

According to an October 5 item from the Associated Press,"the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ deployed voice identification software to help uncover the plot that officials say has targeted Germany, Britain and France." The article goes on to say that voice biometrics has played a role thwarting other terror plots in the past.

Voice biometrics experts believe that the technology has strong potential for streamlining intelligence operations. For example, both the U.S. and British intelligence gather huge amounts of electronic eavesdropping data. Persay's CEO, Almog Aley-Raz offered that "using voice biometrics could allow officials to scan a large number of phone conversations for several suspects' voices."

Voice biometrics may not be perfect (i.e., subject to background noise, etc.) but it has proven to be a valuable tool in the ongoing war on terror.

VoiceVault Offers Voice Biometrics Smartphone Developer Program

A September 8 item on TMCnet.com announced that VoiceVault is now offering a voice biometric Smartphone Developer Program for VoiceVault Enterprise.

According to the article, the program includes several tools and resources that enable developers to design voice biometric-enabled smartphone applications. VoiceVault offers support to various smartphone platforms, including iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

Lee Cottle, Global Executive Vice President at VoiceVault, said that “smartphone users expect robust security and ease of use as a matter of course, and voice biometrics is a key technology to deliver this.” VoiceVault currently offers its VoiceVault Enterprise voice biometric enrollment, authentication, and signature components through 3G or WiFi networks, but has plans to provide an embedded on-device capability as well.

ANSI Standard for Voice Biometrics

An item on SpeechTechMag.com indicates that "the American National Standards Institute has published INCITS 456: Speaker Recognition Format for Raw Data Interchange (SIVR-1), a standard governing the type and format of data that should be included with shared audio files used for speaker identification and verification." Judith Markowitz, president of J. Markowitz Consultants is the editor of the standard, which was 4 years in the making.

The types of data to be included with the file are: the bandwidth used to make the recording; date and time of the recording; type of channel that was used to record the data, such as a wireless or landline phone; information about the speaker, such as gender, age, language, and accent; the input device used; security used, such as the type of encryption; and the sampling rate. According to the article, the format is intended to be vendor-neutral.

It should be noted that, although the standard is not mandatory, it can be very useful to organizations such as military, intelligence and law enforcement that often share data about potential threats.