In this world of information overload, it's fairly easy for people (and especially the government) to keep a very detailed record of other people's lives, who they interacted with, what small things they did, and generally everything most strangers don't care about.
While I was thinking about this, I began to comprehend the massive amount of history that has been lost to us. Since information recording and transmission (or retrieval, depending on your point of view) gets rarer/harder the farther back we go, it's impossible to know the fine detail of important historical figures' lives. They may have had all kinds of less interesting events going on that influenced decisions we think were made rashly or randomly.
If we just had access to the equivalent of the massive volumes of information the NSA (allegedly) has, we could have entire lives or disciplines dedicated to studying one mildly important person - or their interactions with other important people. Imagine: there could be a college class for the interactions between Albert Einstein and one of his teachers.
Who knows? Maybe the NSA will turn into a historical preservation and research information.
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