City buses across America now covertly recording passengers' conversations

City buses across America now covertly recording passengers' conversations.

-- Tom

 

If you've ever been on a city bus, you can hardly have a conversation over the noise of the bus' motor noise not to mention the other "conversations" and noises, buzzers, outside noises etc. They would have to have a pretty sophisticated microphone system just inches from your head to understand anything you said IF it could isolate a conversation from everyone else's voice.

 

It seems to me that the onboard system wouldn't have to do (all of) the filtering/analysis. Some could be done by whatever system is being used to process the recordings. Separate microphones and recording channels could help with that I think. This makes me wonder what the state of the art is WRT computerized analysis for purposes of identifying and breaking out separate human voices. In a multiple-voice, noisy background setting as you say. Surely there are some experts in that field toiling away every day.