British video cams can read your lips

LIP READING software could be installed as part of the UK's web-cam surveillance system within three years, according to Wired.

The software will look to see if anyone mentions any key phrases when talking to their mates and alert the constabulary.

If the lip-reading software picks up someone saying 'atom bomb blah, blah, blah' or the name of a famous terrorist or 'Brazilian electrician', the person saying the phrase could be surrounded by gun-toting coppers in seconds.

Wired said that Richard Harvey of University of East Anglia in Norwich has received a £391,814 grant to develop the system, which is based on existing speech recognition technology.

He has three years to develop it. We assume he will get around the problem with Americans tending to say the word 'tourist' instead of 'terrorist' otherwise there will be a lot of dead, loud, fat people wearing loud shirts lying on the streets of London in pools of their own blood. Still, there is always a silver lining eh?

More here. µ