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Usually the most desired type of traffic is clandestine or private, but clearly there is a role in monitoring and analysing traffic sent in the "clear" as military protocol does sometime fail and information of incredible worth is sometimes sent without the usual coding. Various organizations provide COMINT functions for various governments around the world, with these groups usually part of the intelligence apparatus of those nations. For instance, the group in the U.S. that collects COMINT is the NSA (according to the unclassified portions of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1981 and its predecessor, the National Security Act of 1947. A more precise definition is available.
The SIGINT acronym stands for Signals Intelligence and is a left over from the days of intercepting radio traffic. While today we hear of many cases of signals intercepts (like the fabled intercept of Kremlin power brokers using their car phones), most traffic today can be found on some kind of "land line", and thus is a requires a much different approach to tap. However, many such land lines terminate in a satellite uplink, and thus either the uplink or the downlink can be monitored as well, thus keeping SIGINT a high priority means of gathering COMINT.