Australia is to review its espionage laws, the government’s chief legal officer said yesterday, as the country seeks to strengthen spy agencies strained by juggling counterterror work and worries about China’s rising influence.
For years Australia has been handing extra cash and extra powers to its police and spy agencies to bolster their counterterrorism abilities.
Then in December last year, responding to “disturbing reports about Chinese influence,” the government turned its attention to interference in politics and announced a crackdown on political donations and the outlawing of foreign interference.
“We live in an unprecedented age of foreign interference, influence, espionage and domestic terrorism,” Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter told radio station 5AA in Adelaide.
“We think it’s very appropriate to step back and look at the whole system from top to tail,” Porter said, adding that the government was not aiming its intelligence laws at “any one international country.”
However, the review, which is to run 18 months and is the deepest in four decades, is to be headed by former Australian spymaster Dennis Richardson, who last year warned that China in particular was conducting extensive espionage against Australia.
“With China we’re in a situation which we were never in previously, where we now have levels of concern — because they have levels of capacity and ambition — that weren’t the case,” said Greg Barton, a professor and security expert at Deakin University in Melbourne.
Outdated laws that have not kept pace with the advent of the Internet and cybersecurity challenges, as well as arcane information sharing rules between the nation’s intelligence agencies, are likely to be candidates for reform, Barton added.
A staunch US ally, Australia’s intelligence agencies have expanded while the nation has been on heightened alert from 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East.
That has helped to foil about a dozen plots since, authorities said.
At the same time, intelligence officers have found themselves increasingly focused on thwarting Chinese influence as public concern has deepened, while ties between the trading partners have soured.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Duncan Lewis, the nation’s spy chief, has said that universities need to be “very conscious” of foreign interference — an apparent reference to China’s perceived involvement on campuses.
This month, the rift between the two countries, opened in the wake of Australia’s foreign influence crackdown, widened.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on Monday last week rebuked Australia for applying “colored glasses” to the relationship, as Australia’s largest winemaker — Treasury Wine Estates Ltd — suddenly encountered problems clearing its products through Chinese customs.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of