US Intelligence at the Crossroads

US intelligence activities have changed in recent years because of changing global political conditions. Using sophisticated technologies, intelligence agencies now conduct surveillance of a wide variety of organizations and an enormous number of people, including many US citizens. This has generated a vast amount of data that these agencies have not been able to use productively, in spite of the expenditure of many billions of dollars, mostly with private firms. Some 70 percent of the approximately $75 billion spent on intelligence annually is spent on these firms. The author discusses a number of serious problems with these developments.