Cassius Methyl
Activist Post
Between 2015 and 2017, the Pentagon will have the ability to decipher human voices in surveillance audio even if background noise makes the covertly recorded conversations inaudible.
This may bring to mind the surveillance audio secretly recorded through our smartphones when they are in our pockets. On or off, we know now that our conversations are being recorded by a wide array of electronic devices, and our conversations we used to consider private are actually being stored in data collection facilities like the one in Utah aptly titled the ‘Utah Data Center’.
With this multimillion dollar technology, our seemingly private conversations can be stored and analyzed by government officials even if the background noise is too much for a normal audio recording.
Newly released documents from DARPA show that they are in the third phase of their ‘RATS’ program (Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech). This information indicates that they are going to great lengths to make sure that secretly recorded conversations can be analyzed by the government.
According to the documents, “the research division of a government agency will be testing the speech activity detection algorithm to incorporate into their platform.”
The ‘platform’ is an insidious word for massive, incomprehensible surveillance grid with an unspecified endgame. This ‘platform’ opens up doors for the-powers-that-be, infinite doors to be utilized with what we have every reason to believe is nothing but malicious intent.
According to a USA Today article:
DARPA has spent $13 million on RATS. It now wants to spend another $2.4 million, contract records show, to make the final push to make the system operational by the Air Force as early as this year but by 2017. Other agencies, particularly those in the intelligence community, will also use the system once it’s operational.
The program also seeks to recognize different languages, and filter surveillance audio by recognizing keywords. This may also imply that people in other countries will be targeted.
The US government was also caught hacking into billions of SIM cards recently.
An important question to ask would be, how will they actually put this to use?
Will the government try to start prosecuting people in legal cases with the data collected by the surveillance grid being covertly imposed around us? Perhaps it should be phrased, when will they start using this surveillance data to incarcerate people?
We are surely all aware of the fact that smartphones, certain TVs, and a wide variety of other devices are actually functioning microphones in a surveillance grid being set up that is apparently a high enough priority to the-powers-that-be to be worth millions of dollars in funding.
So we all know this is happening, but why? Where is this going, how far will they go in analyzing this data and how will they utilize it to prosecute and target people who oppose the interests of the US government and their allies?
The actual plethora of potential malicious uses of this data is essential to speculate on. As activists and people concerned about the state of our society and the unchecked power of the US government and other organizations, we must think long and hard about these things. I highly recommend you do research on DARPA, and try your best to fully comprehend how this technology could be utilized against political opponents, dissidents, activists and innocent Americans.
Please share this with everyone. This info is relevant to every single person around you.
Cassius Methyl writes for TheAntiMedia.org, where this first appeared. Tune-in to The Anti-Media radio show Monday-Friday @ 11pm EST, 8pm PST.
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