Australian Security Intelligence Organisation

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation ( ASIO; German Australian Security and Information Service) is Australia's national news agency, in cooperation with the Australian Federal Police responsible for the defense of espionage by foreign powers and the monitoring and prevention of terrorist and other political violence. It is roughly comparable to the British MI5.

Especially in the political literature ASIO is referred due to high secrecy often than Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation ( Australian intelligence ).

Founded as the ASIO 1949. She became known in the 1950s through the Petrov affair. During the 1960s, she supervised as other Western intelligence activities of the opponents of the Vietnam War and other political Left, which were partially classified improperly by ASIO as spies for the Soviet Union.

The suspicion that the Australian Labor Party (ALP ) has always been the ASIO opposite, In 1972, after the electoral victory of the ALP to a " raid " on the ASIO offices under the leadership of the new Attorney-General Lionel Murphy.