History
For more details on this topic, see Signals intelligence in modern history.Intercepting written but encrypted communications, and extracting information, probably did not wait long after the development of writing. A simple encryption system, for example, is the Caesar cipher. Electronic interception appeared as early as 1900, during the Boer Wars. The Boers had captured some British radios, and, since the British were the only people transmitting at the time, no special interpretation of the signals was necessary.
Signals intelligence work can be dangerous even in peacetime. Numerous peacetime international incidents involving the loss of life, including the USS Liberty incident, USS Pueblo (AGER-2) incident, and the shooting down of Flight 60528, occurred during signals intelligence missions.
Read more about this topic: Signals Intelligence
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“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)