Indonesia recalls its Australian ambassador alleging phone-taps on President Yudhoyono
Indonesia is recalling its ambassador to Australia over allegations that Canberra listened in on phone conversations of the Indonesian president.
Indonesia said the ambassador was being called to Jakarta for "consultations".
The move by Jakarta comes as the Australian Department of Defence
and the Defence Signals Directorate, or DSD, (now known as the
Australian Signals Directorate), has been accused of monitoring
the phone calls of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
his wife Kristiani Herawati, as well as eight other high-ranking
officials, including the vice president, Boediono.
The top secret material from the DSD is in the form of a slide
presentation, dated November 2009, and divulges information on
the monitoring of mobile phones just as 3G technology was being
introduced in Asia.
In one of the presentations, entitled Indonesian President Voice
Events, a graphic of calls is given on Yudhoyono's Nokia handset
over a 15-day period in August 2009. The data provides CDRs –
call data records – which record the numbers called, the duration
of communications, and whether the transmission was a voice call
or SMS.
The Australian spy agency “appears to have expanded its
operations to include the calls of those who had been in touch
with the president,” the report indicated. Another slide,
entitled Way Forward, gives the simple command: “Must have
content,” perhaps a reference to encrypted material.
Attached to the bottom of each slide in the 2009 presentation is
the DSD slogan: “Reveal their secrets – protect our own.”
Also named in the surveillance slides are Dino Patti Djalal,
then-foreign affairs spokesman for the president, who recently
resigned as Indonesia's ambassador to the US and is seeking the
candidacy in next year's presidential election for Yudhoyono’s
Democratic party, and Hatta Rajasa, current minister for economic
affairs and potential presidential candidate for the National
Mandate party. Hatta served at the time of the surveillance as
minister for transport; his daughter is the wife of the
president's youngest son.
Other high-level officials on the list of “IA Leadership
Targets” are: Jusuf Kalla, the former vice-president who ran
as the Golkar party presidential candidate in 2009; Sri Mulyani
Indrawati, then a reforming finance minister and since 2010 one
of the managing directors of the World Bank Group; Andi
Mallarangeng, who was at the time the president's spokesman, and
later minister for youth and sports; Sofyan Djalil, who served
until October 2009 as minister for state-owned enterprises;
Widodo Adi Sucipto, a former head of the Indonesian military who
served until October 2009 as security minister.
Another slide, entitled DSD Way Forward, acknowledges that the
Australian spy agency’s must “capitalise on UKUSA and industry
capability”, apparently a reference to assistance from
telecom and internet companies, the same method that the NSA used
to collect data on millions of individuals around the planet.
News of Australia’s high-level snooping on the Indonesian
president and his top aides is certain to provoke a harsh
response from Jakarta, especially considering this is not
Australia’s first breach of trust between the Pacific Rim
countries.
Tensions between Canberra and Jakarta began in October when top
secret files revealed by the German newspaper Der Spiegel and
published by Fairfax newspapers showed that Australian diplomatic
posts across Asia were being used to intercept communications.
Marty Natalegawa, the Indonesian foreign minister, issued a harsh
response and threatened to review bilateral initiatives on issues
important to Australia, including people smuggling and terrorism.
During a visit last week to the Australian city of Perth, Vice
president Boediono - not yet privy to information that his own
Blackberry device had been compromised by Australian spy agencies
- briefly mentioned the long-standing spying controversy.
“I think we must look forward to come to some arrangement
which guarantees that intelligence information from each side is
not used against the other,” he said. “There must be a
system.”
Yudhoyono is the latest in a growing list of global leaders who
have had their personal communications listened to by the
American intelligence service.
It has recently been reported that the leaders of Germany, Brazil
and Mexico have been listened to by the so-called Five Eyes, the
collective name for the intelligence agencies of the United
States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, who share
information.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel in late October demanded a
personal explanation from US President Barack Obama as to why the
NSA had tapped her mobile phone. The White House attempted to
reassure the chancellor that her phone was “not currently
being tapped and will not be in the future”.
It will be interesting at this point to see if the diplomatic
backlash in wake of the recent wave of revelations will curb the
Five Eyes’ surveillance program, or if it will just go deeper
underground.
The Guardian then reported that the DSD worked together with the
NSA to stage a massive surveillance operation in Indonesia during
a UN climate change conference in Bali in 2007.
On Monday a spokesman for Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott
said: "Consistent with the long-standing practice of
Australian governments, and in the interest of national security,
we do not comment on intelligence matters."
