Australias response to Indonesia; we spy on you for your own good In the spying leaks over the last few months we have mostly been hearing about the US, and a little about the UK’s activities. Not surprisingly though Australia’s intelligence agencies use many of the same techniques, including attempting to listen in on leaders mobile phones. That it did so is shown in a leaked document from November 2009 showing that Australia was bugging its neighbor Indonesia, but there is little reason to think that if the Australians were attempting to bug Indonesia’s president then they would not be now. The Australians were not just attempting to listen in on the phones of Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono but also on the first lady, vice president, and numerous ministers. The new Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has pointed out that the allegations date from the previous Labour administration – though this seems unlikely to make much difference. His response has been interestingly forthright “We use the information that we gather for good, including to build a stronger relationship with Indonesia and one of the things that I have offered to do today in my discussions with the Indonesian vice-president is to elevate our level of information-sharing because I want the people of Indonesia to know that everything, everything that we do is to help Indonesia as well as to help Australia.” And in a different interview: “To use the term spying, its kind of loaded language … researching maybe. Talking to people. Understanding whats going on.” We spy on you for your own good does not seem to have gone down too well as Indonesia recalled its ambassador to Australia. Its foreign minister Marty Natalegawa has responded that he does not see how the bugging furthered Australian security “I need quite desperately an explanation how a private conversation involving the president of the Republic of Indonesia, involving the first lady of the Republic of Indonesia, how they can even have a hint, even a hint of relevance impacting on the security of Australia” Not the best way for Tony Abbott to start off relations with the biggest country in Australia’s neighbourhood. theguardian/world/2013/nov/18/australia-tried-to-monitor-indonesian-presidents-phone theguardian/world/2013/nov/18/indonesia-recalls-ambassador-yudhoyono-phone-tapping-australia idebate.org/blog-post/australias-response-indonesia-we-spy-you-your-own-good
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 15:39:35 +0000
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