Three degrees of separation

This visualization by The Guardian breaks down the NSA's "hops" surveillance method. The agency is allowed to travel "three hops" from its targets – who could be people who talk to people who talk to people who talk to you. Facebook, where the typical user has 190 friends, shows how three degrees of separation gets you to a network bigger than the population of Colorado. The visualization allows the users to check how many people are three "hops" from him/her from the number of friends they have.