Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 04/11/2013
American whistleblower
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Australia is caught in a diplomatic storm with its nearest neighbour, Indonesia, following revelations about a spying program in Asia.Indonesia says "Enough is enough" and is now reviewing its intelligence sharing arrangements with Australia.
The tensions have been triggered by revelations from American whistleblower Edward Snowden that Australia and the US are partners in a massive phone and computer surveillance program throughout Asia.
Here's reporter Matt Peacock.
EDWARD SNOWDEN, FORMER NSA EMPLOYEE: NSA is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible.
MATT PEACOCK, REPORTER: Five months after the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden first went public, his leaked documents are still creating international outrage.
Last week the revelation that private phones of EU citizens, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have been tapped, saw a delegation dispatched to Washington seeking urgent reassurances.
ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (voiceover translation): Spying on friends is unacceptable.
MATT PEACOCK: Now a new storage has erupted over Australia's heavy involvement in the NSA operation. Another leaked NSA document from Pine Gap surveillance base near Alice Springs published at the weekend outlines an eavesdropping operation on Indonesian leaders during former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2007 summit in Bali. Other leaks have also revealed that Australia uses at least seven of its embassies and high commissions in Asia to monitor local communications. Both the Indonesian and Malaysian governments have lodged protests over the surveillance.
MARTY NATALEGAWA, INDONESIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: We are not the problem here. Indonesia is - we are not the problem. We are the one who have apparently become subject to such conduct, which we find unacceptable, which must be explained.
ANIFAH AMAN, MALAYSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: It's not right morally to spy on other people. I mean, I'm not sure about what this Australian's culture, but our culture is if you're not happy with something, you talk to them directly. But you don't put on camera, some electronic gadgets and spy and to listen to every conversation and when you're talking about human rights.
MATT PEACOCK: But Australian security analysts say that while the technology might have changed, spying like this is what countries have always done.
SAM ROGGEVEEN, FMR INTELLIGENCE ANALYST, LOWY INSTITUTE: I don't think anyone with a cursory knowledge of international affairs is going to be shocked that countries spy on one another. That's basically what has happened since the beginning of interstate relations.
CARL UNGERER, FMR INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: These international meetings are a source of important information for countries like Australia and the use of the whole suite of intelligence gathering to assist what we do there is - should be of no surprise to anybody.
MATT PEACOCK: The Australian Signals Directorate conducts this international espionage in conjunction with the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand under what's known as the Five Eyes agreement.
DES BALL, STRATEGIC AND DEFENCE STUDIES, ANU: We have an agreement, the UK-USA agreement, which essentially divides the globe up into collection areas under which Australia has responsibility from the mid-Indian Ocean across to the western Pacific. And we monitor all of that area and we exchange that with the Americans.
MATT PEACOCK: For decades, this ASD listening post at Darwin's Shoal Bay has monitored Indonesian satellite and high frequency radio communications, Stretching as far back as the invasion of East Timor, when Australian authorities here knew within minutes of the execution of Australian film crews who were covering the story. Australian supplements this surveillance with eavesdropping from at least seven of its overseas diplomatic missions under a program code-named State Room.
DES BALL: State Room is the system by which those parties to that UK-USA agreement have listening rooms in many of their diplomatic establishments and their embassies and their consulates, or in our case our high commissions, that are used for monitoring local communications up in the very high part of the frequency spectrum that you can't monitor from further away.
MATT PEACOCK: The Australian end of this international snooping program's been run by what was known as the highly secret Defence Signals Directorate, which has been recently rebranded as the ASD and now features this pop new video on its website.
As well as Shoal Bay, the ASD operates four main bases, one at Kojerena, near Geraldton in Western Australia, where these dishes intercept satellite communications. The US spy operation occupies this corner of the complex.
In Queensland, near Toowoomba, the Cabarlah aerials are spread in circles and can provide a fix on mainly radio transmissions in Papua New Guinea and the south-west Pacific. And to the south in the Riverina near Wagga is the new base of Maroondah, which provides similar high frequency eavesdropping and direction finding.
Here at Harman, just down the road from Canberra's Parliament House, the agency's oldest base recently had a multimillion-dollar upgrade.
DES BALL: A whole new facility opened there just within the last two years for monitoring other parts of the radio spectrum, a program called XKeyscore, which has been quite a bit in the Snowden revelations.
MATT PEACOCK: These aerials resembling tuning forks on the roof play a key part of modern-day metadata snooping
DES BALL: You can get basic data on telephone numbers of the callers, of the recipients, the length of calls, anyone who's using sending faxes, using emails, all that basic data is monitored.
SAM ROGGEVEEN: The oversight mechanisms that the United States has, that the UK and Australia has, may not be able to keep up with the sheer scale and the breadth of the data being collected.
MATT PEACOCK: Already the latest revelations have triggered payback attacks like this against Australian websites from anonymous Indonesian web activists. But despite this week's diplomatic storm, the spying is likely to continue unabated.
DES BALL: You'll see a tightening up in different parts of the region, but that's part of the game. And DSD, which was our most capable and useful intelligence agency, will have a hard time for a while getting back on top of this, but you can be assured that they will get back on top of it.
LEIGH SALES: Matt Peacock reporting.
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