Sarah Ferguson presents Australia's premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis from Laura Tingle.
SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: ASIO is celebrating its 75th anniversary as only ASIO would - by staging an exhibition to which no-one is invited except former ASIO officers - and 7.30.
SARAH FERGUSON: One of the most famous defections in ASIO's history was secured only five years after it was formed. ARCHIVAL NEWS FOOTAGE: The morning after the night before in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, the 23rd of October 1970. A few hours after a bomb had blasted the offices of the Yugoslavian consulate.
ARCHIVAL NEWS FOOTAGE: We have also learned very little from fragments found in this car, demolished by two bombs at the Jewish social club Hakoah in Bondi last night. MIKE BURGESS: That's a hidden camera inside a novel, an Agatha Christie novel, actually, a series of novels and this was being used, in this case, we have an ASIO officer sitting on a park bench with this novel pointing at his target. The officer's waiting for his target and expect a suspected terrorist to come into frame.
SARAH FERGUSON: You've just taken me through some of ASIO's history. Some of those cases, how long did they stay open for? MIKE BURGESS: Firstly, I think it's fundamentally important in this modern society everyday Australians understand there is a security service - what we do and why it matters and the laws in which we operate and the oversight we're subject to.
SARAH FERGUSON: We hear you talking about technology a lot in relation to security threats. And you talk about the fact that bad actors are early adopters of technology. So, with all of that focus, how do we understand the role of human intelligence at ASIO? Everyday messaging apps, what we call end-to-end encryption, under a warrant, we can get the ones and zeroes - we can't decipher the ones and zeroes, so we don't know whether those violent extremists are plotting to kill someone or talking about the football. That's important. That's a technology change.
How to cleverly lay down software on a critical infrastructure network to turn the power grid off, AI can help you. AI can help you write code faster. So it's an accelerator of existing threats. That's a problem. It's a problem for my agency. So we have to have other ways around that and the way a computer is at the moment, you can't decrypt it on a supercomputer, so I have to actually get a human close to you or, under warrant, I could get on your phone and get to the messages that way.MIKE BURGESS: We do and I do, yes. And that's actually a good thing. And so, everyday Australians using those apps - no problem with that.
Again, arguing under law in this country, if we have a warrant for lawful access, they should help us get that lawful access. If you're doing nothing wrong, you've got privacy, because no-one's looking at it. If there are suspicions or we've got proof that we can justify you doing something wrong and you must be investigated, then actually we want lawful access to that data.
Mike Burgess Asio Secret Intelligence Headquarters Spies Russian Spies Defections
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