20 May 1999

JYA would appreciate leads on the company (or other companies) which produce the NSA word recognition technology cited in this email exchange, which commences with an excerpt from Interception Capabilities 2000, a report for the European Parliament by Duncan Campbell.

    Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 01:59:13 +0200 (CEST)
    Subject:  Re: DEVELPOMENT OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY...

    >Contrary to reports in the press, effective "word spotting" search
    >systems automatically to select telephone calls of intelligence
    >interest are not yet available, despite 30 years of research.

    This is incorrect. I met the CEO of the company that makes the voice
    print and word identification systems for the NSA. He proudly told me
    his company's products can perform word recognition in 120 *simultaneous*
    languages.

    Unfortunately, I lost his business card and can't for the world remember
    his name or that of his company. But they aren't exactly secretive about
    their products. They are in Virginia, about 30 min from DC.

In response to our inquiry the person who wrote the last messages is certain the name of the company cannot be recalled. We are familiar with several commercial voice recognition products, none of which advertise as far as we can discover the capabilities cited in the message, though some offer unspecified products only to "authorized agencies of law enforcement."

Send leads to <jy@jya.com>.

For anonymous mail use a remailer:

> http://www.publius.net/rlist.html

Thanks very much.