no family

Jan 30 2008, 05:31 PM

Let's assume the phone calls made on board United 93 were faked. What would it take for this to happen? Pardon me if my understanding of the generally agreed upon facts are off.

You would need to know the passenger manifest well in advance. (Do we know when the passengers booked their flights?)
You then need to select which of those passengers you will be impersonating.
Then you must investigate their private lives, days or even weeks in advance, so that when you make the fake phone calls you can accurately assume their private lives, being able to answer private questions, be familiar with family and friend names, history of relationships, etc. in order to maintain an authentic conversation.
This also means that you must be familiar with fiends of family of the selected passengers who you will impersonate.

You then must master speech patterns, dialects, accents, etc.
Of course it's not just you doing this, there are several impersonators, because some of the phone calls were made simultaneously by different people - more than one passenger calling a family/friend at the same time.

Then the technology. What exactly is the technology? I don't doubt it exists, but what exactly is it and where do you get it? I know there is software that can distort audio, adding all kinds of effects. But what is the software that actually makes your voice sound like someone elses? It would have to be able to do it live. Its different than taking a recording and then going back, adjusting pitch and tempo, etc.

That's all I can think of for now. If anyone else has anything to add, feel free.