It's very complicated. I'll give you the response in English that we usually provide.
We use the analysis of metadata, essentially. That, of course, is something that is very much a debate, and I think, for the most part, is misunderstood in terms of the need for metadata. Metadata information, particularly telecommunications metadata, allows us to be able to tailor our collection capabilities, to be able to understand and go after the information that we actually need.
First and foremost, what are our guidelines in terms of what we're looking for? The Government of Canada, cabinet, sets the intelligence priorities. Intelligence priorities are obviously classified, but it's not hard to understand. There is counterterrorism, for example, and when we're supporting military operations, we need to go after information pertaining to that.
The Internet, unfortunately, doesn't have a place where all terrorists go, so we need to understand, as all this information is intermingled on the global information infrastructure, how many pieces of information are being transmitted. We need to analyze metadata. Metadata can be an IP address or an email address, but it can also be when a signal passes from a cell tower to a server to somewhere else. It's through the analysis of metadata that we can then hone our activities and be surgical about what it is that we want to go after, because, as you can imagine, the Internet is incredibly vast. If you actually pause for a moment and try to understand what is actually happening on the global information infrastructure in a minute—how many YouTube videos are uploaded, how many people are tweeting, how many people are using Skype, or texting, or using social media and all of the things that are happening there—it is incredibly complex and incredibly vast. You need to be surgical if you're going to go after what it is that you're looking for.