Patrick Walters | August 08, 2009
Article from: The Australian
AUSTRALIA this week got another glimpse of the troubling global security paradigm that dominates discussions among the government's top counter-terrorism advisers.
The Melbourne-based Australians allegedly planning an attack on Holsworthy army base had links that stretched to Somalia and well beyond the Horn of Africa. It's a home-grown threat that is intimately linked to the global jihadist network.
The Howard and Rudd governments have spent more than $9 billion bolstering our national security since September 11, 2001. The Australian Intelligence Security Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Federal Police and defence intelligence agencies have been transformed and forced to learn new skills in the face of a protean threat that continues to evolve in unexpected ways.
The central issue facing national security planners in Western democracies is whether our spy agencies, founded in the Cold War era, and based on rigidly defined operational and legal boundaries, can be truly effective in countering threats in a borderless world.
It's not just Islamist terror but rapidly emerging issues such as cyber warfare and far more sophisticated transnational crime networks that are driving the rethink at the heart of the Rudd government.
The AFP and ASIO have come a long way in recent years. They have become far more closely linked with other intelligence agencies and tackle a range of wholly new cross-border challenges. But in the view of some of our top national security thinkers, inside and outside government, Australia's intelligence community needs to evolve even further if we are to thwart the emerging threat spectrum.
According to defence expert and close government adviser Ross Babbage, this should include the contentious removal of strict legal and operational constraints that apply to the Defence Signals Directorate , the country's main collector of signals intelligence. It could also include a renewed debate about whether ASIO and ASIS, Australia's secret external intelligence agency, should be merged.
Babbage argues that DSD's charter should be amended to allow it to assist ASIO and the AFP in an unrestricted way when it comes to tracking terrorists or criminals who move into Australia. At present, tight legislative provisions restrict DSD from spying on Australian citizens at home and abroad but it does provide technical assistance to ASIO and other agencies for specific operations.
DSD played the critical role in tracking down the Bali bombers across the Indonesian archipelago. Babbage argues DSD now needs to be able to monitor communications seamlessly at home or abroad and have the ability to work in cross-agency joint teams.
"The Australian Intelligence Community needs to be restructured to permit the full weight of technical and human resources to be applied against priority targets, whether they be international, domestic or both," Babbage tells Inquirer.
Australia's key intelligence agencies are structured to address either international threats or domestic threats when the terrorist, criminal and foreign intelligence service operations we confront show no respect for national boundaries.
"My biggest concern is not when you have already identified a target but what happens if you haven't identified a target. It's not just DSD, it's the whole panoply. What we need to be doing is reducing, maybe even removing, the constraints on effective teaming from detection right through to detailed observations and monitoring," Babbage says.
This week's events involving Somali-born Australians is a harbinger of the new challenges ahead. "We managed to pick this up. But in the area of terrorism and in the cyber area we are going to face more demanding international challenges. We can't afford to be tripping over each other or missing things," Babbage says.
New ASIO director-general David Irvine acknowledged last week in his first public speech that contemporary security challenges were provoking debate in Canberra about whether Australia's spy agencies were correctly positioned for the challenges ahead.
Irvine stressed the intelligence community had to move towards a "single federation, rather than a group of capability specific sites". Vital information also had to be shared more quickly and effectively inside and outside the key intelligence agencies.
"The concept of some separation of powers remains a valid element of the community today and I would advocate caution in tampering with it for no good reason," Irvine said, referring to the basic structure of the Australian Intelligence Community created as a result of the Hope royal commission more than 30 years ago.
Nevertheless, the contemporary security environment -- particularly with technological advances and the emergence of non-state actors as a first-tier threat -- has forced the AIC to come together in ways the Hope commission could not have predicted.
There's no doubt that the radical changes mooted by Babbage would encounter strong political opposition as well as a wall of bureaucratic resistance. A whole new legal and administrative edifice, including civil liberty safeguards, would have to be built. In Britain and the US, similar mooted changes have produced a powerful public backlash.
Senior government sources believe recent changes to the AIC, including Kevin Rudd's creation of the post of National Security Adviser and establishment of a National Intelligence Co-ordination Committee, preclude the need for further big structural reform. The argument inside the bureaucracy is that the key agencies have already developed the new collaborative, cross-jurisdictional relationships vital for our national security. As Irvine points out, the NICC is designed to set priorities as well as ensure optimal levels of sharing intelligence information and intelligence capability between agencies.
But the real debate about further structural change has yet to be had. Senior intelligence sources and security experts inside and outside the government agree on one thing: even closer co-operation will be needed in the future, from better co-ordination of intelligence collection at the national level to sharing of vital information right down to local police working in suburban communities.
The University of Sydney's Alan Dupont agrees with Babbage on the need for further overhaul of the AIC.
"DSD should be able to work closely with domestic agencies on national threats in a way that they can't at the moment. Our intelligence structures are still out of sync with today's threats even though we have made major improvements," Dupont says.
"If you getting national intelligence in Canberra, how are you getting that down to a local police force that has to respond in a way that protects sources and methods but allows them the latest information? We also still haven't closed the gap between national counter-terrorism responses and emergency management arrangements. Both are integral in responding to terrorist attacks."
Defence expert Allan Behm, who has worked for all four government departments covering Australia's intelligence community including the Prime Minister's, Attorney-General's and Defence departments, agrees ASIO and the AFP have done well since 2001. But he says the intelligence community must achieve greater efficiency, working outside the traditional "stove-pipes" as inter-agency teams, while understanding that some jurisdictional boundaries must always remain.
Behm also says Australia's counter-terrorism response must extend beyond good intelligence and tough border controls and embrace troubled communities such as the Somalis. "The problem has been with us for a while. Through inadequate policy over the (past) 10 years we have treated Islamic terrorism as though it had a legitimacy that it doesn't really have. It is a criminal act like any other form of terrorism. Governments have got to keep talking about Australia as an inclusive society, supporting the leadership within the Islamic community as a matter of public policy. We have got to keep talking about the fact this is a society built (on) mutual respect for each other."
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