Glossary term
SIGINT (signals intelligence)
Definition
Intelligence derived from intercepted signals — communications between people (COMINT) and electronic emissions from systems (ELINT). SIGINT collection is a regulated state capability requiring explicit legal authority; commercial practitioners work instead with lawful open-source and human-source disciplines, and treat SIGINT-derived material strictly within the authority of the client agency.
In practice
SIGINT is a government capability, hedged with statute and oversight, because intercepting private communications is exactly the power that has to be. A commercial firm claiming a SIGINT offering is either misusing the word or describing something it should not be doing.
Where it touches commercial work at all, it is on the receiving end: a client agency provides SIGINT-derived context, and the practitioner handles it within that agency's authority, never by collecting it themselves.
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