A local paper last week carried a piece on the Israeli spy network that was dismantled in the US, in light of ties between the network and the failed L&H Speech Products.

... the investigation is also progressing in the direction of Comverse Infosys, a company that supplied snooping equipment to almost all US police and security services. The company is a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, a group with strong ties to the Isreali government. Half of the research investments of Comverse are paid by the Israeli Dept. of Industry and Trade. The FBI suspects that Comverse software is equipped with a "back door", so the Mossad can listen in on-line as they wish

With friends like these, who needs enemies? If that hole is indeed there, it would make a nice case for OSS :-) Funny that a trip to Google doesn't turn up anything but advice on how good an investment either company would make. Is our reporter seeing things due to too much early end-of-year/viva-el-euro champagne? Or are the Feds so embarrased they just locked the bunker doors?

'nother quote:

On July 13 1999, Comverse Network Systems, another Comverse Technology subsidiary, closed a licensing deal with L&H Speech Products for the use of so-called text-to-speech technology. There, all e-mail, fax voice-mail and file data are collected in one mailbox, which can then be tapped into in different languages, e.g. by telephone. Comverse undertook fruitless attempts to commercialize this futuristic product, which doesn't mean the company didn't use L&H technology for its own use.

I'm starting to feel happy the WSJ tripped over that Korea scam when they did...