Samuel's Blog

ASIO’s annual statement is an ongoing source of hilarity

February 29th, 2024 at 07:28am

It really is hard to take ASIO’s annual threat assessment statements seriously. Each year they seem to become more detached from reality and read more like one of my dreams than anything which could actually have happened or be a plausible concern about something which might happen.

This year’s statement made me laugh hysterically for a few minutes. In it, there are details of a supposed foreign group of spies who were apparently doing exactly what you would expect them to do: posing as legitimate business-people, bureaucrats, diplomats etc, trying to connect with people who are in some way connected to government or politics and offering them seemingly real consulting roles so that they can then be subtly probed for more sensitive information. Nothing remarkable in this. It’s exactly what you would expect foreign spies to do, and exactly what I expect our own spies at ASIS are doing overseas.

The real laugh came in the form of how they thwarted the threat from a group ASIO laughably dubbed “The A-Team”

We confronted the A-team directly. Late last year, the team leader thought he was grooming another Australian online. Little did he know he was actually speaking with an ASIO officer – the spy was being spied on, the player was being played. You can imagine his horror when my officer revealed himself and declared, “we know who you are. We know what you are doing. Stop it or there will be further consequences.”

An utterly terrifying digital finger-wagging in an online chat. “Stop being naughty or we’ll do something about it!”. ASIO expect the public to take this nonsense seriously?

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess goes on…

Like other public servants, spies are required to tell their security teams about suspicious approaches so I sure hope the team leader lodged a contact report!

That’s quite an assumption to make. Assuming that policies and procedures for foreign government workers are the same as for Australian government employees. Naive would be an understatement. I’m sure that the foreign spy, receiving such an empty threat, laughed as much as I did when I read it.

The media is reporting it as “job done, threat averted” but Mr. Burgess continues and confirms that, actually, they didn’t stop much of anything.

We decided to confront the A-team and then speak about it publicly as part of a real-world, real-time disruption. We want the A-team to know its cover is blown. We want the A-team’s bosses to know its cover is blown. If the team leader failed to report our conversation to his spymasters, he will now have to explain why he didn’t, along with how ASIO knows so much about his team’s operations and identities.

I want the A-team and its masters to understand if they target Australia, ASIO will target them; we will make their jobs as difficult, costly and painful as possible.

In other words, “we don’t think they stopped when we wagged our finger at them, and we want them to know that if we catch them doing it again, we will wag our finger at them again”.

To be fair, earlier in the story Mr. Burgess did mention that they stopped a handful of Australians from communicating with the foreign spies, although it’s notable that some of those people apparently knew they were dealing with foreign spies and were happy to provide them with information, so I’m sure those people will be able to recommence communications through other means. About the only thing which can really be done is to remove their access to secret information, but given that in one of those cases the information was about the internal machinations of a political party and not secret government information, it’s hard to see how it is any of ASIO’s business, and is in fact quite an overreach on ASIO’s behalf. There is really no difference between that type of information being given to and reported on by the media and read by foreign governments, and just being given directly to foreign governments. It is not a state secret and none of ASIO’s business who knows it. That this is apparently their crowning achievement for the year makes one wonder about the half a billion dollars or more of taxpayer funds that ASIO receives every year, and what other more useful things it could be spent on.

Quite frankly the whole thing is either absurd because it has been made up as security theatre propaganda, or absurd because all they have done is prove ASIO has no real ability to stop foreign spying and are in fact spying on Australians themselves more than the foreign spies are.

The whole thing is laughable.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: Bizarreness,General News,Samuel's Editorials

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