Briefs

Mar 3, 2001. Langley, VA. Reuters reports that the agency is dealing with its "volume challenge" by deploying data-mining systems. One, named Oasis, can convert audio signals from television and radio broadcasts into text on the fly, can distinguish whether the speaker is male or female, and can separate what was said in the conversation by each speaker.

Another called FLUENT allows a CIA analyst to search documents in languages he or she doesn't understand. The user can put English words into the search field, such as ''nuclear weapons,'' FLUENT will search for the term in languages which include Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian.

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