New Advances in Bugging Technology

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Speculation is rite amongst computing experts that British Military Intelligence have developed a computer-based system for transcribing human speech into typescript.

A series of recent articles in Computing magazine strongly suggest that the Home. Office may be about to use such a system for processing tape recordings of conversations. • The source of these recordings could be "bugged" telephone calls. However, in answer to a recent Parliamentary question, the Home Office Minister, Leon Brittan, has flatly denied that his department has bought a computer capable of transcribing the human voice.

Advanced work

Until a few months ago a human voice transcriber was thought to be a vision of the next decade. In April, however IBM announced details of advanced work on an automatic dictation machine that has already been refined to the point where it can transcribe the vast majority of English language words from continuously spoken input.

IBM's efforts are aimed at speeding-up office work. But, the implications of this technical achievement for telephone "tapping" are enormous.

The interception of telephone conversations has been limited to date by the labour-intensive process of cistersatton each tape ricand Wolveisalus information.

However, new telephone exchanges can be rigged so that tape recorders are only switched on when a suspect number calls another suspect number. According to the New Statesman such a "tapping" centre exists at 93 Ebury Bridge Road, London SW1, with the capacity to "tap" 1,000 simultaneously.

With the newly available transcribers, the recordings obtained could be analysed by computers to yield essential information, resynthesized and output in some intelligible form, such as a typescript.

Computers

This could be scanned quickly by a human operator for significant information. Better still, the transcribed recordings could be scanned by computers for key words or phrases that have some significance for the Security Forces.

Transcribing telephone conversations is much more difficult than transcribing a dictated message.

But it would not matter greatly if the transcriber was not 100% accurate as useful information could be obtained with even a low level of comprehension.

Computing magazine claims that the secret British Joint Speech Research Unit has a system that is able to produce intelligible printed versions of at These showed that there had been a dramatic inçrease in "tapping" in the last decade. This is commonly held to be a result of terrorist activity in Britain. However, the Ebury Bridge Road centre was apparently planned in the late '60swell before the onset of terrorist activities in the '70s.

Further cause for concern lies in the fact that the number of Home Office warrants to intercept 'phone calls includes many "general" warrants which allow all calls to be intercepted from an address, such as Congress House, the TUC headquarters, or the offices of a political party. Also, several government secret agencies are not covered by the Home Office figures.

The Ebury Bridge Road centre seems to use only 10% of its capacity for the police, the rest being used by the security forces, such as MIS.

No Act There does not seem to be an Act of Parliament that confers on the state the legal power to intercept communications. The various relevant Acts merely recognise the practice of interception by the state.

The House of Commons was told by William Whitelaw in April that a continuous independent check on "tapping" would in future be made by a senior member of the judiciary.

in view of the enormous increase in the level of 'phone "bugging" that is possible with the new computer-based techniques, the watchdog's efforts will be laughable. Moreover, the reports of the watchdog, apart from the first, won't even be published!

The new 'phone "tapping" technology and Whitelaw's attempts to hide the extent and significance of interceptions represent a new and ominous enhancement of the state's illegal and reactionary surveillance of individuals and organisations.

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CNO IME SOI GLAD