21. A method of managing information comprising: providing a plurality of rules and a plurality of abstractions, wherein each of the plurality of abstractions represents at least one of a class of entities or a class of actions having a role in managing of the information and each of the plurality of rules comprises an expression; determining a subset of the plurality of rules and a subset of the plurality of abstractions relevant to a target; for the subset of the plurality of rules and the subset of the plurality of abstractions relevant to the target, identifying a common subexpression, wherein a first rule of the subset of rules has a first variable defined in a first abstraction, the first abstraction has a second variable defined in a second abstraction, and the second variable evaluates to a constant; for the first rule, removing the second variable from the first abstraction; assigning the common subexpression to a variable; in the subset of the plurality of rules and the subset of the plurality of abstractions, replacing the common subexpression with the variable in at least the first rule; associating the modified subset of the plurality of rules and the subset of the plurality of abstractions to the target; and for the target, controlling access to the information based on the modified subset of the plurality of rules and the subset of the plurality of abstractions.
22. The method of claim 21 wherein the access to the information comprises forwarding an e-mail message.