Signals Intelligence In Modern History
SIGINT is a contraction of SIGnals INTelligence. Before the development of radar and other electronics techniques, signals intelligence and communications intelligence (COMINT) were essentially synonymous. Sir Francis Walsingham ran a postal interception bureau with some cryptanalytic capability during the reign of Elizabeth I, but the technology was only slightly less advanced than men with shotguns, during World War I, who jammed pigeon post communications and intercepted the messages carried.
Flag signals were sometimes intercepted, and efforts to impede them made the occupation of the signaller one of the most dangerous on the battlefield. The middle 19th century rise of the telegraph allowed more scope for interception and spoofing of signals, as shown at Chancellorsville.
Signals intelligence became far more central to military (and to some extent diplomatic) intelligence generally with the mechanization of armies, development of blitzkrieg tactics, use of submarine and commerce raiders warfare, and the development of practicable radio communications. Even Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) preceded electronic intelligence (ELINT), with sound ranging techniques for artillery location. SIGINT is the analysis of intentional signals for both communications and non-communications (e.g., radar) systems, while MASINT is the analysis of unintentional information, including, but not limited to, the electromagnetic signals that are the main interest in SIGINT.
Read more about Signals Intelligence In Modern History: World War I, Between The World Wars, World War II, Aftermath of World War II and The 1950s, 1990s, 2000s
Famous quotes containing the words signals, intelligence, modern and/or history:
“The term preschooler signals another change in our expectations of children. While toddler refers to physical development, preschooler refers to a social and intellectual activity: going to school. That shift in emphasis is tremendously important, for it is at this age that we think of children as social creatures who can begin to solve problems.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The middlebrow is the man, or woman, of middlebred intelligence who ambles and saunters now on this side of the hedge, now on that, in pursuit of no single object, neither art itself nor life itself, but both mixed indistinguishably, and rather nastily, with money, fame, power, or prestige.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”
—Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)