Echelon computers can't cope with bad lines
Found on The Register on Monday, 15 February 2010
So it's interesting to note that Pentagon boffins have now stated that perhaps the most intriguing reputed capability of Echelon - the ability to automatically pick out words of interest and flag that conversation up as important to its human masters - doesn't work.
The news comes as part of a solicitation from the Pentagon crazytech bureau, DARPA, in which the maverick military mayhem mavens request assistance with building a Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) system.
I guess it's good for them that emails and IM chats are already typed and not spoken. Makes it easier to monitor them.