Michael asks:

> Any chance of rewriting that for an international readership?

A layman's paraphrasing:  the job of the 
National Security Agency (NSA) is to be a 
set of intelligent ears for the US.   It gathers 
data (signals), tries to filter this into 
information (de-noise it to determine 
which signals are relevant given some 
set of criteria passed to it by other 
authorities), and refines that into 
information that it passes back to the 
requesting authority.  The requesting 
authority must be "wise" in what it 
asks for and what it does given a result. 

Assets are limited; pattern recognition 
and latency are key issues for 
formulating a response within a context 
of interrelated topics.  (It is illustrative  
to understand why the Brits and Canadians 
armed B-24 Liberators with 30 caliber 
ammunition vs the American use of 50 caliber.)

In other words:

1. It is given topics of interest.

2. It listens to as much conversation as it 
can store and process.

3. It filters that to find conversations 
that are on-topic.

4. It summarizes and passes that on to 
those to whom a topic is of interest such 
that that authority can make strategic decisions.

That is the intelligence game as practiced 
by cryptographers.  They do not determine 
strategy; they enable its validation.

XML is a code for sending signals.  Beyond 
that, signals have to be interpreted and unless 
one has rules for handling topics, it is 
still just signal.  All rules are local 
but a locale is just another way to say 
"agreement on the topics of interest".

Nodes is nodes.  Properties is properties.  
Tell me who gets to name the names so we can 
get on with business.

len

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