Australia’s trainee spies face unexpected challenge: no phones allowed

Australia’s spy agencies offer jobs that are challenging, exciting and provide access to some of the nation’s greatest secrets.

But when young intelligence officers join, some discover an unexpected problem: their office computers and software are less powerful than the personal mobile phones banned from their desks.

The rare revelation about life as a trainee spy was made in a report on intelligence-agency culture published Tuesday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a semi-official think tank based in Canberra.

Based on interviews with some two dozen current and former employees with eight of Australia’s ten intelligence agencies, the 32-page report found most new employees were surprised by the limited capabilities of their office technology.

“Look at who is graduating now,” a former senior intelligence officer told the author, Chris Taylor.

“They’re actually really smart, connected and naturally collaborative. They have great potential as contributors to national security and to help reshape traditional ways of working in national security.

“But they’re also disappointed on arrival! They end up thinking: ‘There was more capability in the phone I left outside than what I’m accessing in here!’”

Working in 1985

The comments illustrate how intelligence agencies face similar problems to many employers, which struggle to meet the expectations of young recruits in a competitive and increasingly global job market.

Mr Taylor, the head of ASPI’s Statecraft and Intelligence Policy Centre, said security protocols should become more flexible to allow intelligence-service employees to use technology that has become a central part of their lives.

“We ask people in these circumstances to go back and work like they are in 1985,” he said in an interview. “It is always lagging behind the way it works in the broader world.”

Despite big investments in intelligence gathering and technology over the past five years, some workers with security clearances are forced to use landline phones and computers without internet connections.

“Even when we pull tech tools into classified spaces, they’re lesser versions because they don’t have the connections and data required to work to their full potential,” another official said in the report.

“(This) has become more acute in the last five to 10 years. Especially as cloud computing, neural networks, machine learning have become the norm for tech.”

Air gap

The rules governing work at ASIO and other spy agencies are classified but they are likely to use “air-gapped” computers, which are not connected online, to protect secrets from attackers.

While the computers have access to government databases, the computers cannot access popular artificial intelligence websites used by many university and high school students.

Mobile phones, including those issued by the Government, are banned from some sensitive offices because of the well-known risk of being compromised by foreign intelligence services, according to the report.

An ASIO spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Since 2021, one of the biggest intelligence investments is the $9.9 billion allocated to the Australian Signals Directorate for Project Redspice, a sprawling computer network designed to defend against cyber attacks, and attack other countries’ digital systems.

ASIO has been allocated an extra $1.3 billion over the same time frame. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service is being given $1.6 billion to help it spy on other countries.