TOP SECRET STRAP1
21 April 2009
VOICE/FAX USER GROUP
Minutes of March 2009 meeting

1.

B14/MCS update (courtesy of

MCS work this month has been almost entirely updates to existing models and minor
adjustments to tasking and diarisation.
The exceptions to this were all deployed today (18/03/09) and are:
Language ID (LID):
New LID deployed for discrimination between Pashto & Dari (for AFGHAN political
targets)
Substantial rebuild of Pashto/Brahui/Baluchi LID (for the Baluchi Linguists)
Speaker ID (SID)
New SID deployed for OPI~MENA: target is General Kiyani (Pakistani Chief of Staff
for the Pakistani Army), for whom it has been difficult to accrue enough truthed voice
data - but we now have a first pass at a working SID system. As ever, we rely on
user feedback to bring false positives & negatives to our attention so that we can
incorporate them into later revisions of the model.
Welcome feedback from

(OPI~MENA)

Until recently, responsibility for a particular target, Vice President 'Adil 'Abd-al-Mahdi
(AAM) has been shared between us and our NSA counterparts. In addition to being
VP of Iraq, AAM is a joint de facto leader of ISCI (= Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq).
NSA dealt with the VP part of AAM but since we have been consistently reporting on
him faster than they, NSA have dropped their involvement.
says that this is
"thanks to B14" - and adds that this good performance has enhanced our reputation
at NSA.
continues: "The AA reporting, which is well received in Whitehall and in theatre,
is regularly used in assessments and other papers. It has contributed to Annual
Performance Review rating for Iraq of 'A' for last year and the year about to end. The
voice recognition programme has made it possible for us to delete at least 75% of the
hits on AAM's phone numbers saving the linguist
] a vast amount of time."
2.

Voice/Fax/Transcription Team update
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