Australia gets 'deluge' of US secret data, prompting a new data facility
theage.com.au
theage.com.au
"Without intelligence support, overwhelmingly provided by US capabilities, we would not have won the seat," one Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officer recently said.
Spying on other countries is something Australians want our government to do when it can't be avoided, not just because they can and Stalin did worse. Doing it to win an election is wrong. Here's another reason to make these activities as transparent as possible: it's obvious to everyone in Australia, except for Kevin Rudd and a few DSD agents, that we have always gained more by not doing things like this than we could possibly gain from some diplomat sitting on a committee in New York.
Australia is allowed to spy on US citizens.
US and Australia pool their collected intelligence. The US gives a list of names to Australia and asks if Australia has any information on those names.
This is pretty much how ECHELON worked, with UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand all cooperating.
Apparently the current foreign minister Bob Carr, when recently asked about this "...did not respond directly to a question about whether the Pine Gap facility is being used as part of the PRISM program."[2]
Considering that one of the primary concerns of Pine Gap is monitoring "transmissions intended for communications satellites; and microwave emissions, such as long-distance telephone calls." I'd find it hard to believe it isn't a fairly major part of the PRISM system for the southern hemisphere.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap [2]: http://www.zdnet.com/au/australian-government-to-assess-pris...
Though I said ASIO rather than DSD:
> But what if the NSA gave the PRISM tech and data feed to ASIO so ASIO could spy on Americans and answer any question the NSA asks (and vice versa).
> Now neither intelligence service has an 'illegal wiretap' on their own citizens. They just receive 'foreign intelligence' from each other.