Australian Spy Agency Reaches Out And Touches Self In Warrantless Wiretap Misfire

from the calls-are-coming-from-inside-the-house! dept

Mon, Oct 20th 2014 12:34pm — Tim Cushing

ASIO -- Australia's NSA -- runs the tightest spying ship in the spying-ship-spying-on-spying-ships business. It's all detailed in one tiny paragraph hidden 26 pages deep in an 100+ page Inspector General's report. [pdf link]

"ASIO intercepted, without warrant, calls made from one of its own regional offices due to a technical error. The data was deleted and processes put in place to ensure it does not happen again."

I'm not sure what tipped the spooks off. Maybe it was the range of the familiar voices (possibly their own, even!) heard during the transcription process. Or maybe it was the embarrassing moment where one ASIO agent admitted to the agent at the other end of the line that he was a "long-time listener" but a "first-time caller," shortly before the feedback loop made the call too painful to continue.

The above screw-up didn't violate the privacy of anyone but a few privacy-violators and the Inspector General readily notes that this sort of thing won't be happening again. Presumably, future warrantless interception will be checked against the very short list of DO NOT SPY numbers, most of which should be readily apparent by their in-house extension numbers.

The report quickly moves on from this little embarrassment but failing to clarify whether it was the interception or the lack of a warrant that was the problem. A "we don't spy on ourselves" policy would make sense but wouldn't necessarily be a violation of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act. On the other hand, the warrant requirement for ASIO is basically an impediment no thicker than the ink applied by a rubber stamp -- all that stands between what the agency wants to do and what it's going to find a way to do anyway. As the laws governing ASIO's surveillance stand now, a warrant is nothing more than a nice afterthought.

The Bill introduces the concept of a "delayed notification search warrant" -- often referred to in the United States as a 'no-knock warrant' -- which would allow Australian Federal Police to search premises without prior warning and "without having to produce the warrant at the time of entry and search".

Maybe the warrant was still in transit, or maybe ASIO though the interception of its own calls fell under one of its other broad warrants, some of which could easily be interpreted as pertaining to every device connected to the Internet.

But these are this year's laws and that is last year's violation, so it still doesn't add up. What it does do is throw some hazy light on an agency that thrives in the dark and just successfully ushered in a brave new world of domestic surveillance. This incident proves a valuable point about trust (namely: don't) and answers an important rhetorical question: Who watches the watchers?

Clearly, the watchers do.

Sometimes.

But only inadvertently.

And it won't happen again.

IGIS Annual Report 13 14 (PDF)IGIS Annual Report 13 14 (Text)

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Filed Under: asio, australia, privacy, spying, surveillance

21 Comments

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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 12:46pm

Answers that
I guess we know now who will watch the watchers...
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Mason Wheeler, 20 Oct 2014 @ 12:49pm

Of course they intercepted it. I bet those spooks were talking about exactly the sort of subject matter intelligence analysts want to listen in on!

(Any resemblance to a game of Paranoia is, of course, entirely coincidental and only a commie mutant traitor would suggest otherwise.)
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 12:50pm

"The data was deleted and processes put in place to ensure it does not happen again."

So they do know what restraint means.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 1:20pm

You guys cut the quote short. Full-context is key for understanding their diligence and careful approach:
"The data was deleted and processes put in place to ensure it does not happen again. To ourselves only. Everyone else can get fucked."
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wereisjessicahyde (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 1:37pm

Spy agencies spying? Whatever next, space agencies going into space, Armies doing fighty stuff and marine agencies..doing.. that marine stuff..what ever it is they do. The world has gone mad.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 1:58pm

Re:
Spy agencies spying? Whatever next, space agencies going into space
Spy agencies spying on entities they are not supposed to spy on. Most people would put "people not reasonably suspected of any crime" on the bold list, but employees of the major spy agencies hate the idea that there might exist information they don't have a copy of, so they restrict their bold list to themselves and cooperating spy agencies from other powers (though the latter is mostly an in-name-only deal).
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 2:10pm

I worked with a guy for years who had a phrase to describe organizations like this--he would say it was like watching a monkey try to fuck a football.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 2:21pm

"ASIO runs the tightest spying ship in the spying-ship-spying-on-spying-ships business."

Shouldn't there be some kind of award for publishing such a finely crafted sentence such at this?
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Paul Renault (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 2:42pm

Re: Answers that
That, and:
..we've traced the call, it's coming from inside the house..
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 3:04pm

Agent: "Boss, listen to this. These guys have spy capabilities as good as ours. Maybe better."
Boss: "Do they know you're listening?"
Agent: "I think so. Someone just asked, 'Do they know you're listening?'"
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 4:26pm

Re:
I think people would have a similar reaction to space agencies being funded to conduct a multi-billion-dollar mission to... their launch site.
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G Thompson (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 4:28pm

As an Australian, who actually has had to deal with this organisation a fair few times, I am just going to sit here in the corner slowly rocking back and forth trying not to go totally insane by the constant giggling coming out of my mouth.

pray for me!
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Pixelation, 20 Oct 2014 @ 6:27pm

Monty Python?
"Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked "

Or...

Those responsible for spying on the people who have just been spied upon have been spied upon.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2014 @ 10:25pm

Song by the "Spyvinyls"
I don't tap
Anybody else
When I wiretap you
I touch myself.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2014 @ 1:07am

Technical error.........riiiiiiight

You sure its not because, someone somewhere, just, could......
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2014 @ 1:28am

This is a one-time mistake, and it will never happen again. Here at ASIO, we pride ourselves on not knowing what the hell we're doing.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2014 @ 3:46am

Not Austrlia's NSA
ASIO is Australia's equivalent of the British Security Service (MI5) - it has some police-like powers but its officers aren't constables. They do counterespionage, counterterroism, etc., but actual arrests are usually made by the AFP or state police. They can hold people in custody, but that is legally different from a normal arrest.

The equivalent of the NSA or GCHQ is the Australian Signals Directorate.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2014 @ 4:16am

Re: Answers that
Actually, part of their job is to watch the watchers. They're the counter-espionage service (amongst other things).
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Just Another Anonymous Troll, 21 Oct 2014 @ 6:38am

Maybe someone called terrorists and then the spies, making them 2 hops away from terrorists and therefore "legitimate" surveillance targets.
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Ninja (profile), 21 Oct 2014 @ 7:23am

Australian Spy Agency Reaches Out And Touches Self

Pardon me but wouldn't this be some sort of masterbation for spies? Ahem.
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John Fenderson (profile), 21 Oct 2014 @ 10:02am

Re: Re: Answers that
But who watches the people who watch the watchers?
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