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An End To Phone Pranking (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A researcher at Carnegie Mellon University has developed an intelligent system that is helping the U.S. Coast Guard to distinguish and weed out prank mayday calls that cost it up to millions of dollars a year when it flies or motors out on pointless rescue missions, per Govtech.com. The program, created by Carnegie Mellon's Rita Singh, creates a barcode of a person's voice, deciphering whether the caller really is on a boat or actually in a house somewhere. It can unmask repeat pranksters since it can pick up telltale markers and match them up.

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  1. Phone pranking? by msauve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm guessing the article is confused.

    If it's an emergency phone call to the Coast Guard, they could just use the GPS support like E911 so they get a location from the cell phone. Surely, that's the only type of phone being used on a boat these days.

    I think what this is really about is people calling in on VHF (marine) radio, not a phone.

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    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law