Information Overload: Impact on Intelligence Practice and Rise of Islamophobia

Running head: INFORMATION OVERLOAD
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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INFORMATION OVERLOAD
The US Secretary of States Condoleezza Rice had in the wake of the attacks on the Twin
Towers in the year 2001 on 11th September had commented expressing inhibitions about the
overload of information within a very short period of time (Sultan 2016). The most intriguing
fact about the flow of information in huge numbers was that from a situation of having no
information at all, suddenly the number of information related to the attack surged up quite high
and the immediate problem that was every piece of information was becoming extremely crucial
to the safety of the country and that every word and almost everything was becoming a piece of
threat. This particular statement of Dr Rice was not just relevant to that period but is also
relevant today and that is very much reflective in the rise of islamophobic attacks and the bias
towards the muslims in the nation. The attack on the twin towers is a watershed incident in not
just American domestic and foreign policies, but is also a major event for the entire world as well
as it was virtually unpredictable that a highly guarded place could be infiltrated by terrorists and
that they could wage such a deadly attack. The major confrontation of the United States of
America with the Islamic world was resurrected by the 9/11 episode, after the embracing of
enmity with Iran post the 1979 islamic revolution (Sultan 2016). However, the 9/11 episode had
been more impactful than the hostage crisis in Iran whereby American diplomatic personnel
were kept under captivity by the student revolutionaries of Tehran University. The 9/11 episode
has thus been one of the most important events in the American contemporary history which had
contributed to the worsening of the relationship between the country and the Islamic world
owing to the fact that America had adopted an aggressive stance in dealing with terrorism post
the attack on Twin Towers. Not just that, persons belonging to the Islamic faith or bearing any
resemblance to being muslim have become the soft targets of attacks in the country by the
civilian population themselves. The American Intelligence Agency has ever since then tightened

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INFORMATION OVERLOAD
the security and they have been empowered to detain anyone even if that means on the basis of
mere suspicion to be potential perpetrator of terrorist activities, and that can be attributed to the
overload of information which is the cause behind the inhibition of intelligence practice in the
nation. Not just in the United States of America, even the UK and several other European
countries had become the hot spots of islamophobia and information overload (Sultan 2016). In
the following sections the impact of overload of information in inhibiting ethical and efficient
intelligence practice and a reflection on the intelligence pathologies shall be provided in light of
the overload of information.
Critical assessment of the impact of information overload for effective, efficient,
and ethical intelligence practice
From the above discussion it becomes clear that excesses have been committed by the
American Intelligence Agency in the matters of ensuring the security of the nation and of the
people by virtue of considering every little piece of information as a potential clue behind the
involvement of a particular person in a terrorist attack and it is also assumed that the suspected
detainee must have been up to the fulfillment of some act of terrorism. In this section the
discussion shall be focusing upon how the impact of overload of information has caused the
effective and efficient and ethical intelligence practice to be inhibited. The role of the
intelligence agency is to look after the security and preventing any untoward incident to
jeopardize the life and liberty of the persons. However, if the intelligence agencies tend to
indulge in excesses it shall be causing more harm than doing any good as that creates a mass
hysteria and the common people are the ones who become the scapegoats of such practices. In
the following sections the discussion shall be devoted to showing how the ethical intelligence
practice gets jeopardized as a result of the overload of information.

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INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Before the discussion proceeds, it is important to provide information about what
information overload means. It is basically a situation whereby the hysteric mindset is triggered
and even the insignificant piece of information is heightened with importance and is considered
as a potential threat. It is a situation whereby any piece of information is sensationalized as an
indication of threat and a result of it huge amount of forces are mobilized to battle terror. An
overload of information tends to create a situation whereby instead of securitizing, it tends to
create more problems by inducing more panic in to the environment by means of acting
arbitrarily (Simons 2016).
It must be said that the information overload is repetitive mention of a particular piece of
information and both the media and the intelligence are responsible for it. Media highlights a
simple issue by sensationalizing it and the intelligence agencies tend to consider all the pieces of
information related to a terror attack and the perpetrator as the source of reference for
anticipating future cases of terrorism. This leads to an overgeneralization of the actual scenario
and resultantly the innocent ones tend to become the scapegoat of it (Simons 2016).
Tougher immigration laws, Islamophobia and Increased Detention post the 9/11 issue in
the US and the UK as an impact of Information Overload
Post the 9/11 episode, US and UK had been put under the radar of high alert and security.
People having a muslim name or if their passport indicated that they belonged to any muslim
majority nation then they were detained at the airport for questioning. Just having a muslim name
or having any connection to Islam made an individual prone to becoming a suspect of
islamohobic treatment. There have been several cases whereby muslims have been subjected to
humiliating treatment in the US and UK and the information overload has to be considered as
responsible for such breach of the principle of ethics. Since the attacks on the twin towers had