VOICE DETECTORS

British researchers are developing a voice recognition system that can identify a speaker if he or she is drunk or
even has a cold. This could help
reduce fraud involving cash
machines and credit cards, which
British banks say costs them over
f,150 million annually.

The new system, called Time-Encoded Signal Processing or
Recognition (Tespar), will record a
customer's standard phrase -
such as cash voice identification -
which will be encoded onto their
card. To withdraw cash, they will
have to repeat the phrase into an
adapted cash point machine capable of comparing the archtype on
the card and the spoken word.