Information Cascade Resulting in Political Blunders
Article: http://justsecurity.org/6906/information-cascades-intelligence-oversight/
This article addresses the relatively recent reauthorization of the NSA’s telephone meta-data program and possible causes of the oversight in the program’s legality. The author discusses how an information cascade within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may have caused the reauthorization by fifteen judges. Rather than an oversight by all 15 judges, an oversight by the first judge could have produced an information cascade in which the next 14 judges based their information off the decision of the first judge. The author argues that it is more likely that this cascade occurred due to a cascade rather than an oversight in research by each judges individual understanding of the program.
This event is a clear example of this course’s subject matter on information cascades. The author even relates FISC’s decision to the phenomena of choosing a restaurant just as was discussed in this course. The article then goes on to explain how information cascades are not solely caused by oversights and miscommunication, but can be deliberately created. The example of J. Edgar Hoover’s national security wiretaps shows how Hoover was able to begin a cascade that began with FDR and continued through Truman. Simply because Truman did not have the same personal information that FDR had, Truman’s decision was based entirely on the fact that FDR had approved the wiretaps, even though FDR had only approved minimal wiretapping. This article is a great example of how information cascades can take place in political decisions.