Policy Forum - Speed, Omniscience, and Democratic Accountability: Pick Two for National Security Intelligence

Lewis Shepherd was director of the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments from 2007-2014. The Institute prototyped or deployed advanced technical solutions including big-data analytic solutions, deep-learning neural-network systems, multilingual machine translation, geo-temporal data visualization and immersive augmented-reality applications.  He joined Microsoft after nearly five years at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) where he served as senior technology officer. Shepherd’s team at DIA built and launched the well-known systems Intellipedia, A-Space and the IC Data Layer.  Intellipedia won the 2008 Outstanding IT Achievement in Government Award from Government Computer News, and A-Space was named one of TIME Magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2008.” Shepherd will address key policy issues raised by the revelations of recent years concerning the data gathering by the National Security Agency and other government agencies.