Both countries maintain effective intercept and analysis organisations - the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) in Australia and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in New Zealand - with the ADF and NZDF having SIGINT capabilities directed towards military traffic. DSD and GCSB also provide 24/7 watch-and-warn alert to their respective governments and defence forces. These agencies also provide official information assurance services, practical advice and support to government, military and commercial organisations for defence against cyber attacks from anywhere on the globe.
During the second half of the 20th Century, countries that were western intelligence targets remained few in number, and for government, diplomatic and military traffic they mainly used high frequency (HF) radio and/or satellite communications, which could be intercepted outside their borders. However, most government and diplomatic traffic is now carried by fibre optic cable, which in order to be intercepted requires intrusive access to domestic and international servers. Mobile military operations continue to rely heavily on terrestrial and satellite radio, although communications security (COMSEC) has been greatly enhanced by encryption and frequency agility being routinely available at many user devices.
Terrorists and jihadists have become much more cautious about using radios or mobile phones. They know the two main methods of pinpointing them (signal triangulation and time of signal arrival at multiple co-ordinated receivers), combined with powerful unscrambling/decryption software and highly competent intelligence analysts can rapidly fix their locations, identities, plans and orders - with potentially drastic consequences for them.
SIGINT
SIGINT, as the name implies, involves gathering intelligence through the interception of signals. These can be clear or scrambled voice conversations, often referred to as communications intelligence (COMINT). Alternatively, the signals could be plain or encrypted data including emanations from installed electronic equipment, instrument telemetry, radar warnings, video, imagery, graphics, emails, faxes and formatted or unformatted messages, carried by radio or fibre optic cable, which are all referred to as electronic intelligence (ELINT).