ABSTRACT
Communications intelligence (COMINT) is an essential means of collection against international and domestically operating state and nonstate targets. Simply put, according to intelligence scholar Mark Lowenthal, COMINT is “the interception of communications between two parties.”1 The National Security Agency (NSA) offers a similar definition: “information obtained for intelligence purposes, from the intercept of foreign communications by other than the intended recipient.”2 As discussed in this chapter, COMINT can be derived from intercepting various forms of transmission-ranging from hard copies of mail, to telephone calls, to radio messages, to Internet traffic. However, signals intelligence (SIGINT) is probably the most widely known and well-established subsets of COMINT. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which has a significant SIGINT responsibility within the domestic setting, this term “refers to electronic transmissions that can be collected by ships, planes, ground sites, or satellites … The FBI collects SIGINT through authorized wiretaps and other electronic intercepts of information.”3
