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Forget Spy Balloons, the World of Surveillance Has Tried Everything From Schoolchildren to Trained Cats
The Chinese “spy balloon” shot down over the United States has brought the seemingly strange methods of surveillance and espionage into news headlines. Balloons have long been used for espionage – and not just for surveillance, as appears to be the case with this one. In the 1950s, Soviet soldiers in East Germany often saw…
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ASIO Gets $1.9 Billion In The Federal Budget, Because Spies Are Expensive
National security is the big winner of the 2021 federal budget, with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) scoring a $1.9 billion funding boost over the next 10 years. “While we have been fighting COVID, other threats to our national security have not gone away,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said during his Budget speech. “To keep…
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Australia’s Controversial Encrypted Messaging Laws, Explained
Australia’s sweeping anti-encrypted messaging laws have been in effect for nearly two years but a Senate committee is conducting a review on whether they’re too powerful and still necessary. To help bring you up to speed, let’s take a look at how the Assistance and Access law works and why experts are concerned about it.…
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How Encrypted Messaging Works And Why Australian Spies Are Trying To Break The Code
With hackers becoming increasingly savvy, many Australians have turned to encrypted messaging apps to cloak messages between friends, colleagues and whoever else they’re speaking to. But beyond knowing it’s one of the safest ways to communicate digitally, end-to-end encryption remains a bit of a mystery. Here’s how it works and why Australia’s spy agencies are…