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Re: [CQ-Contest] [PVRC] Fort Meade Relents - Voice Skimmer Released

To: Pete Smith N4ZR <pete.n4zr@gmail.com>, 'PVRC Submissions' <PVRC@mailman.qth.net>, reflector cq-contest <CQ-Contest@Contesting.COM>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] [PVRC] Fort Meade Relents - Voice Skimmer Released
From: Tad Danley <tdanley@centurylink.net>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 10:19:48 -0400
List-post: <mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
And the best news is NSA is now offering guided tours of their facility at Ft. Meade!

73,

Tad, K3TD

On 4/1/2019 8:56 AM, Pete Smith N4ZR via PVRC wrote:
Ham Radio News Network has learned that the United States Government has decided to release into the public domain one of the crown jewels of the National Security Agency - the Advanced Voice Recognition and Translation System (AVRTS).

AVRTS has long been rumored to exist, but only recently, after its disclosure by Wikileaks, did Fort Meade acknowledge its existence.  A spokesman, who declined to be quoted, told HRNN that AVRTS was first put into service during the aftermath of 9/11, to keep up with increased terrorist "chatter" on the world cell phone network.  He explained that this posed a substantial challenge to programmers because of the variation in languages, as well as different accents in English, the primary language of international communications. "Fortunately," he said, "unremitting effort over a dozen years has produced near-perfect transcriptions of virtually any voice and message."

Sources tell HRNN that AVRTS was initially one of the crown jewels of the U.S. intelligence community, and secrecy was maintained despite persistent rumors of its existence.  In particular, amateur radio operators (hams) noted the widespread popularity of the CW (Morse code) Skimmer software developed by a Canadian researcher, and frequently called for release of similar software for voice transmissions.  Finally, the NSA relented, and beginning today the software will be available for download from the agency's website.  An agency spokesman elaborated "we are doing this to help phone operators compete, and hope they will embrace the new technology."  He insisted that ham operators should not be deterred by the size and complexity of the software - "What's a few terabytes of RAM these days?"

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