This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Your online activity creates tons and tons of data and that data is valuable.

Entire sectors of the economy are built on this principle.

But there is one data set that has proven to be so incredibly valuable

because it was available for free for anyone to use and this data was gathered during the

investigation of a crime. This is the story of the Enron emails that were

collected as the government was building the case to prosecute the company

that became the poster child for corporate crime. But since that, these emails have

helped create new technologies, fight terrorism, and added to our understanding of how we communicate.

It's an incredible story and when I heard it on Business Insiders brought to you by a podcast, formerly called

Household Name, I was like, damn, I wish we reported that.

And since they did such a stellar job, I thought we just present their story to you.

It is fascinating, you are going to love it. To guide you through this twisted tale of crime and data, here's Dan Bobkoff.

Imagine you're working for a big company, like say number seven on the Fortune 500 list.

Oh, and it's around the year 2000. There's no

Facebook, no Gmail. We're not thinking that much about privacy. And then the

company you work for goes bust in spectacular fashion.

Well it was the corporate fraud case that sent shock waves across Houston

and the entire country the fall of Enron.

Congressional hearings begin this morning in the Enron investigation. And then some regulator in

Washington releases your work emails, all of them. So all of a sudden a lot of

things in your life just became public like July 28th 1999 142 p.m.

...