Audio forensics behind the Iron Curtain: from raw sounds to expert testimony. In Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 187-208
Vydáno: 2023
This essay investigates the construction of forensic audio expertise in the legal and security system of Communist Czechoslovakia and shows that the contested nature of speaker identification and sound-based objectivity contributed to the formulation of probabilistic claims in forensics.It pays special attention to the dynamics of the intricate process in which acoustic “raw material” (from anonymous calls, wiretapped phone lines, recorded conversations, or police interrogation rooms) was transformed into different kinds of legal and criminalistic evidence in the service of the totalitarian surveillance state.