Spying is a race to innovate: between the spies and the spy catchers, and between those intent on inflicting violence on our citizens and those who seek to prevent it. To detect and defeat Australia’s adversaries ASIO has to do things they think are impossible.
This means that there are some things we cannot talk about.
We must protect our people: our staff are undeclared for their safety. Spies want to target them and extremists want to kill them.
We must protect our capabilities. While our people are our most important capability, it is also vital to safeguard the tools, techniques and technologies that allow us to stay one step ahead of terrorists and spies.
We must also protect our operations or we will tip off our targets and potentially reveal our people and capabilities. We investigate in secret to protect the reputation of the innocent. We always balance the protection of Australians with the protection of their rights—these are important and complementary priorities for a security service in a liberal democracy.
ASIO is not a secret police. ASIO’s role is to protect Australia and Australians from threats to their security. ASIO operates lawfully, in proportion with the threats we are investigating, and in line with the standards and expectations of the Australian community. There is also a responsibility on ASIO to be as open as possible about what the organisation does and why we do it.
ASIO has taken significant steps to ensure we are more transparent with the Australian community, and we welcome rigorous oversight. After all, transparency is a precursor to trust. However, there are some things a spy agency cannot talk about—especially where human sources and technical capabilities are critical to its success.
So, while we cannot identify our undeclared staff, we can celebrate the difference they make. We must be secretive about our capabilities, but we can be open about our values. And while we don’t talk about our operations, we can reveal their outcomes.