Tom Maguire is an impossibly stupid man, and his commenters are probably even dumber. Maguire had anticipated the possibility that voice analysis would determine that Zimmerman was lying when he (allegedly) told the police that he was screaming for help. His argument was that we can’t use science to identify voices unless we can recreate exactly what those voices were saying. So, for example, if you scream in fear of your life into a tape recorder, the only way to match that recording is to have another recording of you screaming in fear for your life. We couldn’t use your 911 call from moments earlier. Also, you can’t use science to identify a voice if there is any background noise. This, of course, ignores the entirety of the Orlando Sentinal’s explanation:
Though the term “biometric analysis” may sound futuristic, it basically just means using personal characteristics for identification. A fingerprint scanner is an example of a biometric device.
Much as the ridges of a human hand produce a fingerprint, each human voice has unique, distinguishable traits, Owen says. “They’re all particular to the individual.”
Another benefit of modern biometric analysis, Owen said, is it doesn’t require an “in context” comparison. In other words, Owen didn’t need a sample of Zimmerman screaming in order to compare his voice to the call.
The technology Owen used to analyze the Zimmerman tape has a wide range of applications, including national security and international policing, he said. A recently as January, Owen used the same technology to identify accused murderer Sheila Davalloo in a 911 call made almost a decade ago.
Owen testified that it was Davalloo, accused of stabbing another woman nine times in a condo in Shippan, Conn., who reported the killing to police from a pay phone in November 2002.
Davalloo was convicted, according to news reports.
Owen says the audio from Zimmerman’s call is much better quality than the 911 call in the Davalloo case. Voice identification experts judge the quality based on a signal-to-noise ratio; in other words, comparing the usable audio in a clip to the environmental noises that make a match difficult.
And the call on which the screams are heard is better quality than is necessary, Owen says.
“In our world, that’s the home run,” he says.
The article even includes the testimony of someone who doesn’t believe the biometric method is rigorous enough. And he also confirms that the voice is not Zimmerman’s. I’d add to this that, while it is by no means adequate to present as evidence at trial, no one but a moron can listen to the audio of the 911 call and not conclude that the screamer is a young man or boy.
It’s remarkable that Maguire reacts to this news by instantly adopting the pose of a defense attorney:
If I were the prosecutor I would be begging for better experts – sending up a guy who doesn’t believe in the science won’t be helpful. Sending up a guy who says he can’t match it to Zimmerman so it must be Martin will be ripped up by defense experts who will explain the limitations of the techniques. They will uncharitably point out that it might not be possible to match the voice to either person, the judge can then expound on “innocent until proven guilty” and “resonable doubt”, and away we go.
He questions the assumption that if it’s not Zimmerman, it must be Martin. Does he have a theory that there was a screamer on the grassy knoll? He knows that the reason the voice was not matched to Martin is because the researchers didn’t have a sample of his voice. Does he have any reasonable expectation that the match will not be made if and when a sample is provided?
The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming:
MY HEAD IS SPINNING: Am I anti-science because I don’t accept on faith the pronouncements of these two experts in a field far beyond my expertise? Or am I pro-science because I am trying to reach an independent opinion guided by other experts whose qualifications I am unable to evaluate? That might seem like a hard question, but since I am a righty, I know libs know the answer.
His “other experts” is really just a discussion of speaker recognition software that was among the first results of his Google Search. The study explains how computers can be used to recognize voices and some of the challenges those computers must overcome in order to do a good job.
Then we have this piece of brilliance. What if both men were screaming at the same time? What would that do to the 48% match to Zimmerman’s voice?
THAT WOULD TIE IN TO THE 48% MATCH:
From ‘myiq2xu’, who may also be aided by stronger coffee:
Did anyone consider the possibility that BOTH men were screaming and yelling at the same time?
If Zimmerman did half the screaming they have a 96% match.
We can only hope that was a failed effort at snark. He acts is if he believes that the test showed that the screamer was Zimmerman with 48% confidence. What the test showed was that the voice shared less than half of the measured characteristics of Zimmerman’s known voice. In other words, it certainly was not Zimmerman.
Maguire doesn’t offer a conjecture about why Mr. Tom Owen would make up his conclusion. Nor does he challenge Mr. Owen’s assertion that the 911 tape is very high quality. He’s just throwing sand in his reader’s eyes so that they can maintain the fiction that there remains any real doubt about the fact that Trayvon Martin was screaming in terror prior to being executed by George Zimmerman.
Was he trying to get Zimmerman’s gun when he died? Wouldn’t you?
At first I balked a little at Jessie Jackson calling Trayvon a martyr, but now I see that whine as parallel to the firehosing of kids in Birmingham. I don’t know about you, but when I heard about that pleading whine, followed by the execution, it was devastating. It brings institutional racism (such as hoodies equals black male equals black felon) into poignant relief. You think we’re post racial because we don’t spray kids with a firehose? No, our country is still killing black males preemptively because we have been taught to fear and despise them, from preschool to the grave, and that’s why bringing up a black boy in this country is such a difficult job. And it’s why, as Steven D. pointed out, media stories about black girls going missing don’t sell like stories about white girls going missing.
Our country is having to look at the fact that Zimmerman was set free after probably executing a boy crying out for help, and it is wrenching. So, cue the debunking of this tragic moment from mad-people on the right. Even Joe Scarburogh is piping up about how disgusting the reaction from the right has become (saw the video on smartypants).
They all seem to instinctively want to be defense attorneys for this guy.
And those are just the reasonable ones. The anonymous comments we see are outdoing each other in their efforts to be the most racist and unsympathetic possible.
How about we simply have a trial? What’s so wrong with that?
Yes, a trial. Having a trial when somebody kills somebody is just the sort of thing that you might include in a country’s constitution.
I think your coverage and thinking on this has been great. Here’s the link to Joe sounding pretty sane, actually from the Reid Report:
http://blog.reidreport.com/2012/03/joe-scarborough-calls-out-daily-call-er-conservative-attackers-of
-trayvon/
Truly a bittersweet turn for Trayvon’s mother who heard the screams and immediately recognized them as her son’s. Now her mother’s knowledge is vindicated but that can’t erase the sound of mortal fear she heard.
From Maguire’s struggle you would think that if his community recognizes the evidence for what it is that it will be a slippery slope that leads to Jesus being an alien.
Well, Jesus did ascend to outer space, so I guess that qualifies.
Check out this lunatic. What do you think it would take to get him to imagine that the voice is Trayvon’s?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that “BigFurryHat”‘s mother didn’t take him out much as a child.
Keep on BooMan. keep on speaking out
Why is this a “political” story?
Pathetic.
Because there can never be peace without justice first.
Because until every American can truly believe that they are equal under the law, we can never have universal buy-in to this nation’s progress and its promise.
Black Americans are Real Americans. They don’t just deserve, they need to be able to live free of fear.
So why is it that you think it isn’t a story that is political?
You’re pathetic. Still waiting for the evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy and budget cuts for everyone else leads to economic growth.
Or maybe you want to defend your boy Ryan for calling a general a liar?
Without the rule of law, everyone loses.
What can we conclude from the fact that this incident has become so politicized, and that so many conservatives seem to feel an ideological stake in trying to exonerate Zimmerman?
It’s not like admitting that some yahoo shot a black kid for no good reason would challenge any political principle. There’s one reason, and one reason only, why they’re reacting like this: Martin was black. Does anyone have any doubts that if Zimmerman’s victim were white, conservatives would be taking the other side and using Zimmerman’s Peruvian ancestry as an excuse to bash immigrants?
Yes, it does. Implicitly.
The principle of being able to subjugate black citizens to institutions of white supremacy.
If the police had done their job, Martin’s murder would have been nothing more than a crime against an individual. But the police’s response has made it yet another crime against a community.
I specifically meant that I don’t think white supremacism, in itself, is a political principle. It’s a cultural principle with political (and economic, legal, and personal relationship) implications. But I suppose that’s a matter of semantics.
What I was getting at, I think, is that even before racism became impolitic to brag about, I doubt many conservatives, asked what principles defined their beliefs, would have included the desirability of subjugating blacks. It just happens to be one of those principles, like patriarchy, they so like to “conserve.”
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The right wing bloggers felt strong of Zimmerman killing a thug in self-defense or by means of the “Stand Your Ground Act ” with the NRA bloodhounds written all over it. In addition, the fact that Obama spoke up for Trayvon Martin and his parents, the right wingers expected some easy Obama bashing.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The self-defense meme doesn’t explain why so many of them are eager to contort themselves into knots explaining away the complete lack of evidence, beyond Zimmerman’s own word, that it was self-defense, and the extensive and growing evidence that it was not. Nothing undermines people’s right to self-defense like a high-profile case in which someone tries to falsely take advantage of that right.
Since Obama’s statement was exactly the sort of statement of concern you’d expect from any president when a story dominates the news, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, either. It’s like disparaging the residents of a town in Iowa that got hit by a tornado because Obama expressed sympathy for them. This whole spectacle has been (among many other things) a depressing measure of just how irrational their Obama-hatred has gotten.
The titanic butt-hurt from wingers about this case has really been astonishing. I guess for them it’s just another kulturkampf battle and all hands on deck and all that. They simply can’t let the other side have what they perceive as a win. But the specific things they bring up inescapably leads one to conclude that killing an unarmed black youth is not at all a bad thing and may very well be a good thing worthy of their finest/lowest rhetorical efforts.
Google his name and you’ll find his blog. He’s a resident troll at Balloon Juice.
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Balloon Juice connects with Booman’s fp story mainly because of quoting their blog troll myiq2xu. Sort of LMAO … created plenty of visitors to the pond.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Actually, the same company took two speeches of Richard Nixon on got an 86% match, which would not have met their 90% threshold. When they test a person who is attempting to disguise his voice they get a match in the low 90’s. A test on screaming versus talking? Not demonstrated at their website.
So if I had to guess rather than await a test on Martin’s voice then yes, I would bet that they will get two inconclusive matches. But that is just me guessing; others are more comfortable with faith-based initiatives and trusting experts.
Even the biggest dolt in the history of time can recognize when the civility portion of the program is over. Enjoy your quest for affirmation rather than information.
Thereby proving there was a third person there screaming and the Sanford Police have failed to find this witness. Maybe!
Let us know when the goalposts can’t be moved any further.
fingerprints are different too if the hand is say pitching a baseball vs. say at bat. They kind of stretch out in the throwing
This seems to be an extremely lazy critique, Mr. Maguire.
You’re not dealing with the methodology and the science at all. It seems all you did was a cursory reading of the website without reading any of the “boring” technical stuff.
Could you try again, this time showing that you have a grasp of the underlying science and methodology?
My grasp of the science? In contrast with BooMan’s? And is anything preventing you from jumping in, or do you just take at face value any expert claim a newspaper prints if you like its conclusion?
However, there may be a surprise for you downthread somewhere. I have to see where it fits.
Oh. We were going to be civil and I just went of the rails. Okay.
Let’s just review a few facts.
The 911 tape sounds like a boy to me.
The mother says it sounds like her boy.
The acoustic fingerprint does not match Zimmerman.
The guy who relies on other methods (whatever they are) thinks the voice is clearly a boy’s.
There are at least three witnesses who heard the screaming and said they thought it was the boy’s voice.
The only people who have said the voice is not the boy’s are either related to Zimmerman or work for the police department that is having a public relations disaster for not arresting Zimmerman.
So, those are uncontested facts.
But let’s just use our brains for a bit shall we?
Does a person who is in the process of beating the crap out of someone scream like that? Or does someone who is pinned down and has a gun pointing at them scream like that?
For forty seconds on the tape and however long before the call started this person was screaming in terror.
Does that sound like this fight was going back and forth?
But let’s roll the tape, shall we?
Okay. So, we know words were exchanged and then there was a pause before the screaming began. How does that fit with the girlfriend’s story?
It’s not hard to put this together if you’re willing to look at the map:
You can see on the bottom left that there is a swimming pool. That’s behind the clubhouse where Trayvon was seeking shelter from the rain. In the bottom middle of the picture is Twin Tree Road. That is where Trayvon was walking when Zimmerman called 911. No doubt he may have looked strange as people do when talking on the phone through an earpiece. Zimmerman was in his car and Trayvon must have walked past him. When he got to the bend in the road (where a car is parked in the photo), he probably began jogging or running at that point. It’s also the point on the 911 call when the dispatcher realizes that Zimmerman is in pursuit. Zimmerman said Martin ran. His girlfriend said he was walking fast. Whatever.
When he got around to the back of the apartments, Zimmerman couldn’t see him anymore (Martin thought he had lost him). But then he came around the back of the apartments, too. That’s when Martin said that the guy was behind him again. Then he asked him why he was following him, probably from a distance. That’s when the witness wondered who was walking their dog in the rain. They had that conversation as they approached each other, and then there was a lull in the conversation. This is when the struggle occurred, which resulted in Martin being pinned down and shrieking in response. That’s when the witness look back out the window and saw them on the grass (not the walkway).
You can listen to the rest on the 911 tape. Forty seconds of desperation followed by a gunshot to the chest.
End of story.
You keep forgetting the eyewitness, ‘John’, who saw Zimmerman on bottom getting beaten and called 911. Maybe if the police could forget John they could find grounds for an arrest.
Nice to see you figured out how to use Google Maps; I have a slick map with arrows and marks for the key points, such as where the car was probably parked, where they scuffled, and so on. Maybe one day you will too.
I would say we are in pretty good agreement as to there likely movements. I do question this:
“When he got around to the back of the apartments, Zimmerman couldn’t see him anymore (Martin thought he had lost him). But then he came around the back of the apartments, too. That’s when Martin said that the guy was behind him again. Then he asked him why he was following him, probably from a distance.”
Martin was supposed to be running, or walking fast, from the scary racist with a gun. Yet now he is turning back to chat with him, or engage with him, or something. Yet Zimmerman is the aggressor?
I agree that for the timing to work Martin has to turn back – he was a minute from home if he just kept walking.
Well, nice to see you are doing a bit of your homework; I wasn’t sure you had it in you. After you explain ‘John’, you can tackle these audio forensic experts:
Collection of Exemplar
It is recommended that the exemplar of the known voice must be collected in as close to the same manor as the recording of the unknown voice was recorded. For example, if the recording of the unknown voice was recorded over the phone, the exemplar of the known voice should be collected over the phone, etc. When the exemplar is collected, the suspect is asked by the examiner to stay the same words in the same way as they were spoken by the unknown person. In other words, in a normal, natural voice.
3. IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE [91] MARCH 2009:
AURAL-SPECTROGRAPHIC VOICE IDENTIFICATION
Audio forensic examination of recorded dialog may lead to a legal dispute over the identity of one or more of the conversation participants. A criminal suspect or a party to civil litigation may deny being the individual who uttered the recorded words, especially if the recording was made via telephone without eyewitnesses to identify the talker visually. In these situations, the forensic audio examiner may be asked to identify or to exclude that the suspect was the source of the words in the recording in question.
The aural-spectrographic method for audio forensic voice identification is based on the judgment of a trained examiner who compares the unknown example of speech with one or more known examples [30]-[33]. As the name of the method implies, the task of the examiner is to render a judgment based on both an aural comparison (careful listening) and a visual comparison of speech spectrograms.
In a typical case, the examiner begins by listening critically to the recording of the unknown talker and identifies specific phrases that are distinctive and relatively noise-free. The examiner then arranges a recording session with the suspect to create exemplars that match the selected phrases of the unknown talker in pace, emphasis, and enunciation. The suspect repeats each example phrase multiple times to produce recordings with as close a match as possible to the timing and speech pattern of the unknown examples.
4. From Canada, Forensic Science Services
Voice Identification
The spectrographic voice identification analysis has two steps. The sound of speech is first transformed into a three dimensional (time – frequency – volume) graphic pictures which do reveal numerous acoustical features of an individual’s voice. The second step involves the pattern comparison of the same phrases/sentences from the unknown sample and the suspect’s sample. The results of analysis are expressed as:
Probably the same speaker (high level of confidence).
Possibly the same speaker (intermediate level of confidence).
Inconclusive(due to the insufficient number of comparison words, poor quality of recordings, too high variability of the voice, possible disguise).
Possibly not same speaker (intermediate level of confidence).
Probably not the same speaker (high level of confidence).
The results depend on quality of recordings, the total number of comparison words, speakers’ condition, and individual speakers’ voice variability. There is a requirement for a minimum number of 20 comparison words in a `connected speech’. The suspect should provide the comparison sample by reading three times the transcript of the unknown voice sample.
So would any of these experts undertake an analysis of background screams from a 911 call? Tough call. Not.
FWIW, the product touted in the OS that scored the Zimmerman match at 48% was rolled out March 1, 2012, so the track record of the current version in a courtroom is (I am guessing) zero. But they surely liked the publicity.
I feel a little awkward introducing all this reality to your little faith-based community. Gee, an expert spoke, the widely read Orlando Sentinel printed it, and it was gospel here. Probably still is. Carry on.
First of all, I didn’t call him a scary racist with a gun. Based on his conversation with his girlfriend, he thought the guy was trouble, which seems to have been an accurate and wise assessment.
There was indeed one eyewitness who reported seeing Trayvon Martin on top. I can’t find a transcript or recording of his call to 911. If you have that, please share it.
His account is important. But it is not the only account.
The timing is important. Remember that the girlfriend’s call ended only one minute before calls started coming in to 911. We can add 40 seconds and some change to that to when the actual shooting occurred. So, we have Trayon turning around and asking Zimmerman why he’s following him. Zimmerman responds. Trayvon asks him again. Zimmerman responds. Some pushing ensues and the phone call stops. Within 60 seconds, people are calling 911. On those calls we can hear a boy screaming in desperation for 40 seconds before he is executed.
It’s kind of hard to fit John’s account into that scenario.
But, okay, I’m begging the question.
Let’s try to make this clearer.
There is a sixty-second gap between the end of Zimmerman’s 911 call and the beginning of the first 911 calls from other people reporting yelling. Since Zimmerman claimed to be checking for addresses, we know he lied for a few reasons. First, he knew the neighborhood and could provide an address. Second, he had already provided an address and arranged for the police to call him. Third, you check addresses by looking at the front of an apartment complex, not by running around the back. Fourth, he didn’t have time to check an address, run around the back, engage in a shouting match, and then be returning to his car.
So, the first part of his account is a lie. He wasn’t jumped from behind or anything like that. He followed Martin around the back; Martin saw him, and stopped to ask him why he was following him. There isn’t any more time left for Zimmerman to be retreating.
The next question is really only whether Zimmerman was winning or losing the fight. Did he have Martin pinned down or was he pinned down? There wasn’t much time for any kind of back and forth. Zimmerman claims he was decked by a single punch that broke his nose, and then had his head bashed into the pavement. The witnesses don’t support the pavement part of his story. Not even John. The video evidence certainly raises serious doubts about the claim that his nose was broken and does little if anything to support any kind of head injury. Even the claim that he received medical attention at the scene is dubious since the paramedics worked on Trayvon until 7:30 and the police car left for the station by 7:35 or so. How many paramedics were on the scene?
And then we have the audio tape. It sounds like a boy. The witnesses who have chimed up say it was a boy. The mother says it was her boy. Two separate experts say it wasn’t Zimmerman.
I mean, can we add this up?
Finally, you are playing defense attorney with the audio analysis. Yes, under ideal circumstances, you have the subject under your control and you can calibrate his voice for optimum results. But you act like you didn’t read the article.
His technology was just used in court to convict someone. And the person who works in a state that doesn’t allow that kind of evidence also used his methods to confirm it wasn’t Zimmerman.
This doesn’t have to be rocket science. Listen to the tape and imagine that it is recording a boy who is pinned to the ground being held at gunpoint who is terrified. Allow yourself to hear it. And you will know what happened. It is only by working so hard no to hear it that you are able to maintain these fictions.
Having read all that, I still don’t see anything that makes me question the title of this post.
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Voice analysis is not so straightforward especially when it involves a scream, see this article on court admissability. Booman’s story should have stated Owen Forensic Services was hired and paid by the Martin family as some blogs suggest.
Your link Orlando Sentinel doesn’t work.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I do not know if the Owens people were hired by the Martins…there seems to be no evidence of this, or rather some say that this is so but it seems as if no one has actually proven it…but I do know this. In the courts of this country, the side with the most financial resources usually wins. It will be charge/countercharge, expert/counter-expert, publicity/counter-publicity until the final decision is made, and that decision will be based upon political expediency (where the most money goes in terms of publicity and trial representation) at least as much if not more than it will be based upon so-called “justice.”
The fact that the Martin family has trademarked their son’s name goes a long way for me to believe that they are in it for the long haul. The big haul as well, if possible. And why not? “‘Hit’s the ‘Murican way,” and they have the same rights as any other ‘Muricans. Right? Riiiiight. Less’n ‘a course they walk down the wrong street at the wrong time…
The right to be part and parcel of the national scam, no matter whether they are right or wrong.
‘Hit’s the ‘Murican way!!!
Money talks, ‘n everybody kin hit the jackpot!!!
‘Murican Idol justice.
Ah cain’t wait fer the next installment.
Goddamn I am coming to loathe this country!!!
AG
his name than profit. For example now that they have trademarked his name and image they can sue anyone who uses it without their permission. This can be one means of stopping some of the particularly nasty white supremacists organizations from using his name and image in disturbing ways. For example producing racist t-shirts and selling them.
You are right, of course. But in this culture as it now stands, how much action taken is in any way honorable and how much is Kardashian family/Palin family hit it while the iron is hot?
I am beginning to expect the worst from everyone.
On the evidence. Plentiful evidence.
Reason enough to loathe this system.
AG
Does this kid seem tainted? He has a right to be. But I don’t think he is.
No, he doesn’t, Booman. He seems to be a good, gentle, sad older brother who is trying to make sense of what is going on as best as he can. I feel for him.
As a quick sidelight, I want to once again (sigh) try make clear to the participating denizens of two-dimensiondom on this site that my comments on this fiasco have had nothing whatsoever to do with my belief that either one of the two principals was either “right,” “wrong” or anywhere in between those two mythical poles of existence. I wasn’t there and I totally mistrust the bought-and sold U.S. media, so I simply do not know what happened. My problem was…and remains…the politicization of what happened, with a further interest in how the media lined up the contest.
There is actually only one major story going on in the U.S. today…the re-election of the current president and the ongoing legitimization of the fix that is needed to ensure that re-election. I do not care whether the sub-stories are about Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman, global warming or the style choices of the “Mad Men” costume designers. Ultimately…and for the most part quite unconsciously, quite automatically…the vast PermaGov media machine clomp, clomp, clomps its way to its desired goal. Those truly in the know…high-level intelligence people, media bosses, high-level political operatives…nudge that machine this way or that, depending on the current state of the fix. A good fixer doesn’t want any fix to become too obvious to its targeted marks, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to see it break down, either.
I made that position as clear as I could possibly make it in post after post here, and time after time one leftiness clone or another accused me of “racism,” “contrarianism” or whatever other dastardly trait his or her media-clouded mind might latch onto in an effort to discredit someone who refused to buy into the mainstream pro-Trayvon Walker fix…which was also a pro-Obama fix considering his own statement early on about “If I had a son”… as it stood.
No surprise there…I’m used to it.
So it goes.
AG
He looks like a nice, articulate, handsome middle-class American kid who is coping amazingly well with an unfathomable event in his young life.
Web Extra: Trayvon Martin’s Brother Speaks Exclusively To CBS4 http://cbsloc.al/HzUrvm
If Trayvon was anything like his brother, he was the farthest thing from some kind of gangster hoodlum. His brother seems like a really nice, well-grounded and smart kid.
facts of the case and what we know and what we don’t know. I highly recommend everyone reading it because it is straightforward reporting on what we know and what we don’t know
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017887566_trayvonmartinfacts02.html