The government wants a record of your voice

The government wants a record of your voice
(Image credit: iStock)

Much like the unique pattern on your fingerprints, your voice offers unique biometric identifiers — so, of course, the government and some businesses want a record of it. More than 65 million "voiceprints" have already been recorded and added to government and private databases, and millions more are being collected on a regular basis.

The data will be used for everything from tracking criminals to providing forgotten passwords. And this isn't the stuff of science fiction: It's already being used in place of login info for banking by phone at one mutual fund based in Pennsylvania, and some parole officers use voiceprints to keep tabs on newly released inmates.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.