All those who are using Smart Phones in Britain and surrounding areas should better be aware that the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency(NCA) has started building a database which is loaded with voice recordings scrapped from the smartphone users of the region.
The objective of this database is to compare the audio files with the recordings of wanted criminals, those recorded at crime scenes and undercover operations. Is intended to catch hold of the Criminals in time or at least make a note of their whereabouts.
This undercover surveillance operation is reported to have started in May this year and is being called as ‘Voiceprint’ by the law enforcement agency.
Now the big question who is recording and how is the voice being captured?
Well, those reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders say that the voice samples are being collected by injecting a spying malware into the mobile phones via telecom carriers. And then recording the conversations which are being carried out on the device- like how Amazon Alexa captures voices to improve the services of the voice assistant.
Voiceprint is similar to that of the facial technology surveillance being carried out in China and might attract the attention of the nationwide civil liberty groups and privacy advocates soon.
However, a senior officer from NCA says that the activity is taking place with the consent of the government and is meant to improve public safety and security. New recruitment of intelligent officers to take up the task of analyzing the voices was carried out in August this year.
Note- A same kind of project was carried out by HM Revenue and Customs department last year which stored over 5 million taxpayers ‘Unique Voice-prints’ without the consent of users. But due to a high voice raise from a civil liberties team, the massive database was deleted as per the records.
