I'm not sure we're talking about the same things here?
Perhaps in the startup world that is common on HN things are small, lean and trusting enough that this sort of outlook is possible.
The context of the article, Executives at the sort of companies that buy IBM, they absolutely invest in monitoring and retention by choice or by law.
Where I'm sitting now we retain every email, voicemail and internal chat for tens of thousands of people and video from hundreds of cameras. We retain 100% of voice calls for some sections. People who deal with the public have all their calls recorded as well as their screens. Every meaningful door is operated with an access card.
The limiting factor on implementation of these things is not some non-specific altruism, it's money. Money for licensing, infrastructure and operations - it's not cheap, not close.
No, Watson is not the specific enabler for these things to happen as they clearly already do, but the sort of intelligent XaaS that Watson could be is exactly what would make these systems cheaper and more effective.
Responsiveness for specific categories could be determined on the fly leading to lower size of retention and operators/administrators could probably be eliminated entirely.