Man, even 'three hops rule' is one of those things where I have to say, "if you guys only knew...". The normal judicial discovery process itself can encompass

Man, even 'three hops rule' is one of those things where I have to say, "if you guys only knew...". The normal judicial discovery process itself can encompass far more needless data than even '3 hops' and few people would bat an eye, because the assumption is that the investigators are sifting through the data to find the evidence instead of just capturing everything to use for nefarious deeds afterward. Given the stated purpose of that search it even makes sense: To find connections between terrorists in cells that are directly connected you would need 1 hop, for cells directly connected through only 1 intermediary you would need 2 hops, etc. So if you're willing to limit yourself to discovering connections between cells that directly share a connection to a given other cell then 2 hops would be fine. But somehow I don't think that's the most prudent means of uncovering connections between terrorist groups and their ongoing recruits.