ASIO on high alert as Middle East explodes
Palo Alto, California | Australia’s intelligence agency would consider going under cover in mosques and other religious places in the search for extremists if there was enough rationale to do so, Australia’s top spy says, adding ASIO had increased its vigilance since the Hamas attacks on Israel.
ASIO director general Mike Burgess said that while Australia’s terrorist threat assessment had not changed, the agency had seen an increase in neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists consuming and commenting on incendiary content that raised concerns around potential violence.
Heightened tensions. Protestors near the US embassy during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Beirut, Lebanon. Bloomberg
Asked if ASIO would go under cover in mosques, Mr Burgess said: “The greater our concerns get the more of our more intrusive methods could apply.
“We wouldn’t do that if we didn’t have any concerns. We’d have to have a reason to put someone somewhere.
“We obviously don’t talk about what and how we do it. But we have a range of methods, including human sources and other collection capabilities that enable us to understand what’s going on,” Mr Burgess said.
In the US controversy erupted last year after the FBI made efforts to investigate a supposed link between traditionalist Catholics and the far-right, white nationalist movement.
Mr Burgess said monitoring all elements of extremism was needed, recalling that three weeks after ASIO lowered its threat level last year, “we had a terrorist incident” that the agency assessed to be “Christian violent extremists”.
He said the Hamas murderous attacks on Israel on October 7 had triggered greater concerns among extremist groups.
“Since the mass terrorist attacks, we’ve seen people from the neo-Nazi cohort and the Sunni violent extremism cohort consuming the content, and commenting on it. We will continue to monitor that,” he said.
“We see no reason to raise the threat level. But our vigilance has increased.”
ASIO’s annual threat assessment has previously warned of Australians drawn to nationalist and racist violent extremist ideologies.
Mr Burgess, who spoke on the sidelines of the Five Eyes intelligence summit in Palo Alto, said he also had separate concerns about adversaries trying to infiltrate Australia’s sensitive AUKUS pact information, but that ASIO was capable of handling that.
“Some nations have said AUKUS is interesting. They’ll already be trying to tap into that through the UK and the US. Australia is now part of that,” he said.
“They’re probably looking for how can they get inside [AUKUS] once it is set up. That’s traditional espionage. We’re capable of handling that with our defence and defence industry partners.”
“Of course, given the significance of AUKUS, we’re in conversations with what security or additional security capabilities is needed by defence, [and by the] defence industry.”
A surge in intellectual property theft by China prompted an unprecedented summit in Palo Alto this week lead by the “Five Eyes” intelligence network and global businesses.
Leaders of the Five Eyes countries – the US, Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand – gathered publicly for the first time in their 77-year history to call for a step-up in co-operation with global business in the fight against IP theft and cyber infiltration to companies and government.
Introducing your Newsfeed
Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.
Find out moreRead More
Latest In North America
Fetching latest articles