The Coast Guard wants to fight prank calls with voice recognition

The National Coast Guard is facing a surprising threat: prank calls. The agency has been flooded with fake distress calls in recent months, sometimes as often as every day. Since each call is a potential life at risk, the Coast Guard has a duty to respond. Depending on available resources, that could mean scrambling a C-130 aircraft or helicopter, sometimes even diverting airspace from nearby airports — all for a bad joke.
“We’re just getting more hoaxes every day,” says