Infoglut

1 Introduction

Infoglut and Clutter-Cutting

Data Overload

After a two-year investigation into the post-9/11 intelligence industry, the Washington Post revealed that a sprawling array of public and private agencies was collecting more information than anyone could possibly comprehend. As the newspaper’s report put it, “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.”¹ The NSA is merely one amongst hundreds of agencies and contractors vacuuming up data to be sifted, sorted, and stored. The resulting flood of information is, in part, a function of the technological developments that have ...