the interception itself is not illegal. There can, however, be national laws on who is allowed to collect, store, and process radio traffic, and for what purposes. Monitoring traffic in cables (i.e. telephone and Internet) is far more controversial, since it most of the time requires physical access to the cable and thereby violating ownership and expected privacy. See also Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology COINTELPRO ECHELON Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 Geospatial intelligence Human intelligence (espionage) Imagery intelligence Intelligence Branch (Canadian Forces) List of intelligence gathering disciplines Listening station Open-source intelligence Radio Reconnaissance Platoon RAF Intelligence Signals intelligence by alliances, nations and industries Signals intelligence operational platforms by nation for current collection systems TEMPEST US signals intelligence in the Cold War Venona Zircon satellite SOT-A References Further reading Bamford, James, Body of Secrets: How America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ Eavesdrop on the World (Century, London, 2001) West, Nigel, The SIGINT Secrets: The Signals Intelligence War, 1900 to Today (William Morrow, New York, 1988) External links Part I of IV Articles On Evolution of Army Signal Corps COMINT and SIGINT into NSA NSA's overview of SIGINT USAF Pamphlet on sources of intelligence German WWII SIGINT/COMINT (PDF) Intelligence Programs and Systems The U.S. Intelligence Community by Jeffrey T. Richelson Secrets of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War and Beyond by Matthew Aid et al. Maritime SIGINT Architecture Technical Standards Handbook (PDF) Command and control Cryptography Cyberwarfare Intelligence gathering disciplines Military intelligence