Following on from a gripping report by the ABC exposing a detailed and clandestine spy network orchestrated by the Rwanda government, Australia’s intelligence agency ASIO has stated that the situation isn’t just worse than what was reported in the expose; indeed, the situation regarding foreign espionage in Australia is worse than ever before.
While stopping short of going into specific details regarding their claims, senior ASIO officials confirmed that efforts by foreign powers to peek into our nation had ramped up to an ‘unprecedented scale.’ As well as the Rwandan network, ASIO believe other governments going to lengths to spy on Australia include China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Malaysia.
It was revealed to ABC that one foreign government’s espionage efforts resulted in intervention from the Morrison government who used official diplomatic channels to address the issue directly.
ASIO have detailed how governments can ‘co-opted’ ex-patriated refugees or immigrants into being intelligence officers, often against their own will. The recruits can be tricked into their role as a ‘spy’ by a group fronting as a charity or community group, or coerced into participating by threats against themselves or their families.
In one situation explained to ABC, one expatriated recruit was shown a photo of a family member in their home country sitting between to intelligence officers.
Professor John Blaxland from the Australian National University explained that new recruits could be given tasks ranging from “gathering information to pass back to the home country” to “conducting illegal acts that are not in the interest of the company they are working for or Australia more broadly — effectively hostile acts.”
“Sometimes the methods involved in getting secret intelligence can be a little bit unsavoury, putting pressure on people, one way or another,” he said. “You might say we’ve discovered you’re substantially in debt and you wouldn’t want people to know too much about that, but I’m not going to say anything about it, but could you just tell me about… and off you go.”
ASIO do stress that the espionage networks in question involve a “small number of individuals who seek to do Australia harm” and is in no way indicative of the larger, law-abiding refugee population.
