The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is Australia's national security service, which is responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, and terrorism.
ASIO is comparable with the United Kingdom Security Service (MI5) and the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As with MI5 officers, ASIO officers have no police powers of arrest and are not armed. ASIO operations requiring police powers are co-ordinated with the Australian Federal Police and/or with State and Territory police forces.
ASIO Central Office is in Canberra, with a local office being located in each mainland state and territory capital.
Read more about Australian Security Intelligence Organisation: Command, Control and Organisation, Relationships With Foreign Agencies and Services, Archival Material
Famous quotes containing the words australian, security, intelligence and/or organisation:
“The Australian mind, I can state with authority, is easily boggled.”
—Charles Osborne (b. 1927)
“Our security depends on the Allied Powers winning against aggressors. The Axis Powers intend to destroy democracy, it is anathema to them. We cannot provide that aid if the public are against it; therefore, it is our responsibility to persuade the public that aid to the victims of aggression is aid to American security. I expect the members of my administration to take every opportunity to speak to this issue wherever they are invited to address public forums in the weeks ahead.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Since an intelligence common to us all makes things known to us and formulates them in our minds, honorable actions are ascribed by us to virtue, and dishonorable actions to vice; and only a madman would conclude that these judgments are matters of opinion, and not fixed by nature.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)