Until you piss off or catch the eye of someone with access to it. Then you'll find out just how quickly your particular needle can be found in that haystack.

""If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

- Cardinal Richelieu

I think my ex-girlfriend studied under this Richelieu guy.

What if every sentence began with - "Hypothetically speaking"

Hypothetically speaking, I think the good Cardinal would say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Or like searching for a web page on the internet!

Not to mention all the fun machine learning and analysis that could be done.

This attitude got plenty of usenet posters in trouble. [0]

[0]: Exhibit A; http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?hl=en&lr=&safe=o...

The NSA likely has more advanced tech than we do.

Ever play "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon"? Doubtless that they are building a comprehensive social/activity/location/finance graph of as many people as possible so that when someone pisses off the wrong people they can be dealt with completely.