American website Intercept reveals secret activities of Australian spy agency

Philip Dorling
The Canberra Times

An American website has revealed some of the most secret activities of Australia’s electronic spy agency as well as counter-espionage information that Australia’s closest allies withheld from Canberra.

The Intercept website has published more documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that expose top secret operations by the US National Security Agency, as well as its Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, designed to penetrate foreign computer networks.

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Photo: Reuters

The newly published information, coming little more than a week after Federal Parliament passed laws preventing publication of details of Australian intelligence operations,
shows the ASD and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service are involved in highly sensitive “clandestine [human intelligence] operations to obtain cryptographic information and material”.

Codenamed PAWLEYS, these operations involve covert remote access to foreign computer networks as well recruitment of spies in foreign governments, embassies and telecommunications companies to steal ciphers and cryptographic information.

A top secret 2006 document says members of the “five-eyes” intelligence alliance – the NSA, the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the ASD, Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, and New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau – “all operate PAWLEYS programs and that NSA collaborates with each on targets of mutual interest”.

Another 2013 NSA document previously leaked by Mr Snowden revealed that the ASD obtained nearly 1.8 million encrypted master keys, which are used to protect private communications, from the Telkomsel Mobile telephone network in Indonesia, and developed a way to decrypt almost all of them.

The newly published documents show intimate collaboration between the NSA and its five-eyes partners, including the ASD, on cyber-espionage, and a wide range of other signals intelligence activities.  These include “network infiltration operations” and operations requiring a special sensor positioned close to the target device or facility.

The documents confirm earlier Fairfax Media reporting about spying from secret ASD facilities in Australian embassies in Asia.

However, they also show that Australia was not admitted to some secrets shared by the other, larger members of the five-eyes partnership.

A 2003 NSA document reveals that the codeword FORBORNE “protects that fact that the National Security Agency, GCHQ and CSE can exploit ciphers used by hostile intelligence services”.

Success in accessing the highly encrypted communications of foreign intelligence services is the most closely held secret of signals intelligence agencies.  The document shows that FORBORNE information was shared between the US, Britain and Canada, but not with Australia and New Zealand.

A 2009 US embassy cable published by WikiLeaks reported that “several hostile intelligence services are known or suspected to have undeclared offices in Australia, including services from Russia, China and Iran”.

Some of  the newly published NSA documents deal with top secret intelligence programs that were so tightly controlled they could be disclosed only to a very limited number of people approved by senior US intelligence officials.  The documents include warnings that any leak would “cause exceptionally grave damage to US national security”.

Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has called Mr Snowden “an American traitor.”  Australia’s new national security laws criminalising any disclosure or publication of details of “special intelligence operations” by ASIO or “ASIO affiliates” are intended to prevent any similar leaks by “trusted insiders” within the Australian intelligence community.