Australia refuses to comment on reports security agency targeted Indonesian president’s phone

CANBERRA, Australia – Prime Minister Tony Abbott refused to comment Monday on media reports that an Australian security agency attempted to listen in on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yuhoyono’s cellphone in 2009.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. and The Guardian reported Monday that they had documents from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden that showed the agency also targeted the phones of Indonesian First Lady Kristiani Herawati as well as another eight government ministers and officials.

The documents reportedly showed that the Australian Defence Signals Directorate, now the top-secret Australian Signals Directorate, attempted to listen to the president’s phone conversations on at least one occasion and tracked activity on the phone for 15 days in August 2009.

Abbott, who was not in government in 2009, declined to comment on the reports in Parliament.

“All governments gather information, and all governments know that every other government gathers information” Abbott said.

“The Australian government uses all the resources at its disposal — including information — to help our friends and our allies, not to harm them,” he added.

But Bob Carr, Australia’s foreign minister until Abbott’s coalition won government at September elections, advised Abbott to assure Yudhoyono that if his phone had been tapped, it wouldn’t happen again.

“If the American president can give a guarantee to Angela Merkel of Germany that America won’t be overhearing what she says on the phone, then we ought to be able to do it without any trouble to the president of Indonesia,” Carr told Nine Network television news.

Second on the target list after the president was his wife, also known as Ani Yudhoyono.

Vice-President Boediono, who visited Australia last week, was third and his predecessor, Jusuf Kalla, is fourth.

Also listed was the government’s then foreign spokesman who later became Indonesia’s ambassador to Washington, Dino Patti Djalal.

Former Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, now a managing director at the World Bank, is also on the list.

The Indonesian government called in the Australian ambassador for an explanation earlier this month following reports that the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was a hub for Washington’s secret electronic data collection program.

A document from Snowden published last month by German magazine Der Spiegel, describes a signals intelligence program called “Stateroom” in which U.S., British, Australian and Canadian embassies house surveillance equipment to collect electronic communications. Those countries, along with New Zealand, have an intelligence-sharing agreement known as “Five Eyes.”

The Australian Embassy in Jakarta was listed as one of the embassies involved in a report from Australia’s Fairfax media, along with Australian embassies in Bangkok, Hanoi, Beijing and Dili in East Timor; and High Commissions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.