Although the development of state-of-the-art speaker recognition systems has shown considerable progress in the last decade, performance levels of these systems do not as yet seem to warrant large-scale introduction in anything other than relatively low-risk applications. Conditions typical of the forensic context such as differences in recording equipment and transmission channels, the presence of background noise and of variation due to differences in communicative context continue to pose a major challenge. Consequently, the impact of automatic speaker recognition technology on the forensic scene has been relatively modest and forensic speaker identification practice remains heavily dominated by the use of a wide variety of largely subjective procedures. While recent developments in the interpretation of the evidential value of forensic evidence clearly favour methods that make it possible for results to be expressed in terms of a likelihood ratio, unlike automatic procedures, traditional methods in the field of speaker identification do not generally meet this requirement. However, conclusions in the form of a binary yes/no-decision or a qualified statement of the probability of the hypothesis rather than the evidence are increasingly criticised for being logically flawed. Against this background, the need to put alternative validation procedures in place is becoming more widely accepted. Although speaker identification by earwitnesses differs in some important respects from the much more widely studied field of eyewitness identification, there are sufficient parallels between the two for speaker identification by earwitnesses to benefit greatly from a close study of the guidelines that have been proposed for the administration of line-ups in the visual domain. Some of the central notions are briefly discussed. Rapid technical developments in the world of telecommunications in which speech and data are increasingly transmitted through the same communication channels may soon blunt the efficacy of traditional telephone interception as an investigative and evidential tool. The gradual shift from analogue to digital recording media and the increasingly widespread availability of digital sound processing equipment as well as its ease of operation make certain types of manipulation of audio recordings comparatively easy to perform. If done competently, such manipulation may leave no traces and may therefore well be impossible to detect. Authorship attribution is another forensic area that has had a relatively chequered history. The rapid increase in the use of electronic writing media including e-mail, sms, and the use of ink jet printers at the expense of typewritten and to a lesser extent hand-written texts reduces the opportunities of authorship attribution by means of traditional document examination techniques and may create a greater demand for linguistic expertise in this area. A survey is provided of ongoing work in the area, based on reactions to a questionnaire sent out earlier this year.

Forensic speech and audio analysis forensic linguistics

This thesis analyses the phenomenon of conspiracy theory, using the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy as a case study. Doubt is the root cause of conspiracy theory, stemming from
both the innate biases all humans exhibit, and a traumatic experience – in this case the
assassination of JFK. This thesis argues that conspiracy theories are created and take hold
because of a predisposition toward conspiracy theory, a misinterpretation of a central piece of
evidence, such as the Zapruder film, and agency panic, where dispossession causes one to feel as
if their agency is under threat. Conspiracy theory can provide believers with many emotions
which appear to the individual to not be available elsewhere, namely closure, comfort, control,
and a sense of leisure.
Using the assassination of JFK, this thesis examines the role of conspiracy theory in
modern American society. It weighs up the benefits of conspiracy theory, such as it is an example
of free speech and it can aid transparency, with the negatives: that it can possibly cause harm to
its adherents and their dependants because of a belief in ends justifying the means. The
conspiracy theory of David Lifton and how he came to form his ideas, and how Oliver Stone’s
movie JFK forced a huge document release will also be examined. The study of conspiracy theory
itself is oft bifurcated. Humanities scholars tend to look at the implications of conspiracy theory
on society. On the other hand, those which have a background in social sciences usually focus on
what causes people to accept and believe in conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory, however, is a
complex issue, and this division leaves one with an incomplete picture. By taking an
interdisciplinary approach, one can better understand both why conspiracy theory is so prevalent
and how it became that way.

/pdf/a-paranoid-style-the-jfk-assassination-and-the-politics-and-27xc7w5s7v.pdf

A Paranoid Style? : The JFK Assassination and the Politics and Culture of Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy theories can be quite dangerous and have risen in prevalence. The rise of conspiracy theories has been met with an outcry to increase public trust in science. However, using trust in science to stop conspiracy theories may have unintended negative consequences. Trust in science entails the blind acceptance of information based on the inclusion vs. exclusion of scientific content. This, combined with the fact that many conspiracy theories contain scientific content, suggests that trust in science may actually increase belief in conspiracy theories that contain science. Thus, we hypothesized that trust in science would interact with the presence of scientific content to predict beliefs and dissemination, such that individuals high in trust in science would depend more on the presence of scientific content in their judgments of legitimacy. In Experiment 1, we gave 148 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers articles varying on presence of scientific content and conspiratorial nature and measured their beliefs in the article. Participants high in trust in science were more likely to believe in the articles containing science and less likely to believe in the conspiratorial articles. In Experiment 2, we gave 73 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers exclusively conspiratorial articles varying on presence of scientific content and measured their beliefs in the articles, as in Experiment 1, and dissemination decisions. A significant interaction was found between trust in science and presence of scientific content on both beliefs in and dissemination of the articles, such that those high in trust in science were more likely to believe in and disseminate articles that contained science. These findings suggest that while trust in science may be beneficial in certain respects, when conspiracy theories contain scientific content, it can be detrimental.

Trust in science is not the answer to conspiracies: It’s throwing water on a grease-fire

http://jfk-records.com/ScienceAndJustice_45%284%29_207-226%282005%29.pdf

Synchronization of the acoustic evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy

Arriving in Moscow on 16 October 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald was met by Rimma Shirakova, an Intourist Representative responsible for showing the young American around and informing interested parties of his intentions. On Oswald=s twentieth birthday two days later, Rimma took him on a tour of Lenin=s tomb. She also presented him with a copy of The Idiot. An ungenerous observer would note the aptness of the title, but it is the choice of author that is most significant: Oswald is uncannily Dostoyevskian, and seems almost to have arrived in Russia solely to fraternize with the spirits of the nation=s underground men. Had Oswald made his way through all of Dostoyevsky=s works B and such an achievement is conceivable for this dyslexic but obsessive reader B which of the novelist=s characters, one wonders, would have seduced him most profoundly? Prince Myshkin=s alienated saintliness may have seemed to Rimma a correlative of the odd duck Oswald=s, but benevolence, however transposed, was never the keynote of the ex-marine=s inner symphony. Philosophically justified murder (or something close to it) was to be Oswald=s route to lasting infamy, and one imagines him brooding on his likeness to Raskolnikov. A certain few are given special licence, he must have thought, and those few must fulfil grand designs. Alas, Oswald=s misfortune, of which he was often aware, was that he was more Smerdyakov than Raskolnikov, more ignoble runt-bastard than ennobled transgressor. There would be murder, and there would be reasons behind it, but there would be no cleansing trial, no soul mate to share the penance and redemption.

D.B. Thomas

Papers

Echo correlation analysis and the acoustic evidence in the Kennedy assassination revisited.