- The Strategist - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au -
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service speaks
Posted By Graeme Dobell on October 25, 2020 @ 13:00
For those in the diplomatic service in the early years, I can read into the history a very real anxiety about having the overt and covert elements of government working in parallel. With ASIS having cover departments like Defence and like External Affairs, it brings to the fore concerns about ‘Well, if mistakes are made, who carries the can?’ And probably in the early days when the service hadn’t built up the centre of gravity that you need to be a foreign espionage service, I think there was probably very real concern that the risks outweighed the benefits and that any gems of intelligence that we provided for the Australian government were going to be very few and far between.
[Hope] didn’t merge the two into a hybrid, the way the Americans have with the Central Intelligence Agency. He delineated between … the intelligence function and the law-enforcement function. He specifically addressed the privacy of Australians and the special requirements that intelligence agencies have to do to protect the privacy of Australians. And the other thing that Hope did very well, for which the legacy continues to this day, is the delineation between intelligence assessment and policy.
There is a risk if collection and assessment are merged, that one can contaminate the other. ‘Contaminate’ may be perhaps too harsh a word to use. But there can be a tendency that one leads the other in ways that are unhealthy. We, as a collection agency, are working to the intelligence requirements of the assessment agencies.
Officers can use reasonable force. They cannot use violence. There’s a series of definitions in the way the law has defined what we can do. So, really, we’re talking about the low end of the spectrum of using self-defence techniques where lethal force is inappropriate, but there might be scenarios where using proportionate low-level techniques to achieve an outcome is appropriate.
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[1] Australian Secret Intelligence Service: https://www.asis.gov.au/
[2] one public speech: https://archive.lowyinstitute.org/publications/asis-60
[3] Paul Symon: https://www.asis.gov.au/About-Us/Message-from-DG.html
[4] culture clash: https://kokodafoundation.wildapricot.org/Resources/Files/vol3no4Behm.pdf
[5] ASIS HQ: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/canberra-here-one-day-still-here-the-next/
[6] two royal commissions: https://www.asio.gov.au/about/history/hope-royal-commissions.html
[7] called the exercise: https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/biography-robert-marsden-hope-qc/
[8] broadened the right: https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/marise-payne/media-release/intelligence-services-act-amendment-bill-2018
[9] employ force: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2Fc847cbd4-a9ca-41ce-93e0-8e53eac88585%2F0012%22