Electronic surveillance

NSA voice recognition technology: ‘Blanket surveillance, not tracking criminals’

The types of surveillance people accept today are a logical extension of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ telescreens spying on you as well as churning out propaganda, which is a clear invasion of privacy rights, analysts told RT.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is using voice recognition software to spy on people and detect their locations, according to declassified documents obtained by the media. The NSA has been recording and gathering private phone calls to identify people by their unique “voiceprint” for more than a decade.

RT discussed the issue with William Binney, former NSA technical director and whistleblower, and Richard Barbrook, academic in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at the University of Westminster.

“In 1984 George Orwell has this idea that a large number of the population had telescreens where the television spies on you as well as gives you propaganda. And this is the source of the logical extension of this,”Barbrook told RT.