This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist. If you find value in independent local reporting, make a donation to power our newsroom today.
This archival content was originally written for and published on KPCC.org. Keep in mind that links and images may no longer work — and references may be outdated.
Congressman Schiff says information overload big challenge for government
The leak of more than 90,000 internal documents outlining United States military action in Afghanistan underscores a growing challenge for American intelligence - there’s a lot of information to digest.
Intelligence operations in this country have greatly expanded since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As human intelligence has grown, so has the technology to gather it.
Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff said he’s concerned about information overload. "I think one of the biggest challenges we have in the intelligence community right now is we collect a mountain of data. More and more every day. And we already had a problem connecting the dots. Now, there are a whole lot more dots than there used to be."
Schiff said the federal government needs to hire two kinds of experts: good engineers who can write software to organize information, and analysts who can sift through reports for the relevant data.