After emailing Full Tilt Poker enquiring about their stance on data mining programs, I received the following reply:

Statistical tracking programs for online poker have become more and more common in recent years. There are several products available that are similar to the one you mention in your email.

Initially, these programs allowed you to download your own hand histories into them, which in turn allowed you to examine the tendencies of your opponents, and analyze your own play. When used in this manner, we see nothing wrong with them whatsoever.

However, some such programs now come preloaded with several hundred thousand hand histories that the developers have obtained in one of two ways: either by buying them outright from other players, or by using a technique called “data mining” on various poker sites. Needless to say, we certainly find the use of these programs in this manner to be unethical; players have access to information for which they really have not paid (in the form of rake, and time at the tables with the vast majority of the players in the hand histories).

We cannot stop players from selling hand histories; the files are stored on their computers, and they are free to do as they choose with them. However we do not support programs such as this when used in this manner. To that end and to answer your other two questions:

a) Full Tilt Poker does not provide any API for mining hand histories
from observed tables

b) Players are only able to record hand histories for games in which
they are involved.