National Security Australia 2005
Address by Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner John Lawler APM
Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre
Monday 21 February 2005
Attorney-General, Phillip Ruddock; Shadow Minister for Homeland Security, Robert McClelland; His Excellency Ong Keng Yong, Secretary-General Association of South East Asian Nations; Her Excellency Ambassador Cristina Ortega, Philippine Ambassador to Australia; Commissary General Suyitno Landung, Chief of Criminal Investigation Division, Indonesian National Police; Deputy Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Andrew Metcalfe; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this conference alongside representatives from so many fields working to maintain national security.
It reinforces the core tenet of the response to terrorism and more broadly national security, that it must be a truly whole-of-government, and indeed community response. Law enforcement is just a segment of the response, albeit an important segment.
Looking through the prism of a 21st century globalised world from an AFP perspective, the job of maintaining national security is an incredibly complex and difficult task. It is one that requires ongoing review and adjustment in accordance with changes in the criminal environment.
I understand this is the 3rd National Security Conference to be held in Australia and the AFP is pleased to have been an active participant at all three.
Last year at the conference, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty - who incidentally extends his apologies for not being here today but is attending to national security business overseas - provided delegates with an overview of initiatives being employed to strengthen the law enforcement response to criminal activities undermining our national security.
As each month passes, significant progress is being made in this regard, so today I'd like to take the opportunity to report back on some of these developments as well as on some recent crime trends; and then canvass some of the challenges forming on the horizon for the remainder of 2005.
National security redefined
When we think about national security in 2005, what do we mean?
It doesn't seem that long ago that national security was a subject most people read about in history books rather than in the daily newspapers. Responsibility for maintaining it fell largely with the military, as it generally related to concerns about protection against armed forces, physical threats from abroad or from matters that were the purview of our intelligence agencies.
But as we all know, 11 September 2001 changed all that, demonstrating in dramatic fashion trends that had been developing in the previous decade - the erosion of national borders under the pressure of globalisation, the emergence of non-state based threats, and the vulnerability of national symbols and national infrastructure to attack.
Today, the definition of 'national security' has been significantly broadened. The Australian Government articulated its understanding of security in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 1997 White Paper, In the National Interest and the 2003 White Paper Advancing the National Interest. These stated that security involves the preservation of the "state's capacity for independent decision-making, thereby ensuring that it can pursue national objectives."
This is a definition that opens national security threats to include non-military threats ranging from fraud on and corruption of financial institutions, illegal migration, illicit drugs and other forms of transnational crime, to pandemics and environmental degradation.
A broader definition again has been articulated by the United Nations, which stated that for too long national security was interpreted narrowly as "…security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as global security from the threat of nuclear holocaust…Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives."
The United Nations now defines human security as "safety from chronic threats and protection from sudden hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life."
At present, the United Nations' human security agenda encompasses seven subjects or areas of threats to individuals - economic security, health security, food security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security.
At a time when concepts of national security are being fundamentally rethought, the broader canvas of human security provides an additional perspective from which the components of national security can be perceived.
The rethinking of national security has profound implications for many sectors of our society, particularly for the role of law enforcement.
As each day passes, we continue to be reminded of how Australia is very much part of the globalised world, exposed to all its good and its bad and therefore a myriad of new challenges.
The year that was…
This is illustrated by events over the past 12 months since the last conference.
From a law enforcement perspective we saw the Australian Embassy bombing in Indonesia, bombings in places like Turkey, the Philippines and Spain, ongoing arrests in relation to terrorist-related activities (including some Australians), growth in internet-based crime, new evidence pointing to an alarming surge in identity-based crime, the death of an Australian peacekeeper in the line of duty, and the overwhelming social and physical destruction wreaked by the Asian tsunami.
I'll come back to some of these developments shortly, but first I'd like to focus on strategic responses in the counter-terrorism arena.
AFP and terrorism
Countering terrorism remains a business priority for the AFP in 2005.
It is a complex crime that warrants a complex response. Not only are we seeking to investigate terrorist-related activities, but identify them at the earliest possible stage and in doing so, prevent them from ever occurring. That is the collective challenge for us all.
Before I go on to talk about some of the advances in this area, I'd like to briefly explain how the AFP structures its counter terrorism response program.
Essentially, our approach is multifaceted and can be most easily understood if plotted on a matrix.
On the Y axis, the opposite ends represent the internal and external environments in which we work - or the domestic versus the international environment.
The X axis charts our proactive and reactive responses in the counter terrorism environment and provides the continuum on which we plot all our responses ranging from counter-terrorism policy initiatives to post-event responses.
Anything that appears on the right side of the Y axis generally indicates action taken after an 'event' (not necessarily an attack but a terrorist-related activity) at a domestic or international level. Anything plotted on the left side of the axis represents work being undertaken to prevent terrorist incidents, both domestically and abroad.
So, in essence we have internal/proactive responses; internal reactive responses; external/proactive strategies; and external reactive responses.
To illustrate this, I'd now like to turn your attention to some of the work that has been going on in each of these quadrants.
The north-eastern quadrant (the internal/reactive environment) includes AFP operations such as the investigations involving Jack Roche and Jack Thomas.
Roche was the first Australian to be convicted of terrorism-related offences in relation to plans to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. In June last year, he was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment.
Jack Thomas was arrested last November and charged with a number of terrorism-related offences.
Obviously that matter is still before the courts, so there is not a lot more I can say.
And there are a number of other high profile cases still before the courts.
In the south-eastern quadrant (the external/reactive environment) we chart our responses to 'events' like the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta and bombings in other overseas locations, as well as ongoing investigations into the Bali bombings.
This was a particularly busy quadrant for the AFP in 2004. One of the key activities followed the truck bomb explosion outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta on September 9, killing 11 people and injuring more than 150 others, some seriously.
At the request of the Indonesian National Police, the AFP deployed a response team to assist Indonesian authorities with the aftermath of the explosion and subsequent investigations.
The team provided support in areas such as forensics - including crime scene analysts, disaster victim identification experts, and post bomb blast analysis - as well as experts in investigations, intelligence, technical, protection and operations support.
We deployed about 40 officers in total.
Members of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist organisation - some of who are suspected of involvement in the Bali and JW Marriott Hotel bombings, were found to be involved in the preparation and commissioning of the Embassy bombing.
So far 12 people have been arrested for their involvement in the Embassy attack and the AFP continues to assist the Indonesian National Police in locating those responsible for all three bombings.
Joint investigations between the Indonesian National Police and the AFP have so far resulted in more than 140 alleged Jemaah Islamiyah members being apprehended for terrorism-related offences. The credit for this must go to the Indonesian National Police, who have worked tirelessly to bring offenders to justice.
Some 33 people out of these 140, have been convicted for their involvement in the Bali bombings and 13 people for their involvement in the Marriott bombing in August 2003.
Looking more broadly throughout the region and beyond, a number of other AFP teams have been deployed to assist in various terrorism-related incidents over the past 12 months. Just last week, at the request of the Philippines National Police, we sent a team of AFP members to provide forensics and post bomb blast assistance, following the bombings in Davao City, General Santos City and Manila. They remain on the ground as we speak. There have been a number of other investigations around the region but I am not able to comment further due to the sensitive nature of the investigations and to preserve their integrity.
A critical component of our counter-terrorism strategy lies in the next quadrant: the external/proactive response capability. This is situated in the south-western sphere of the axis and occupies a significant proportion of the AFP's work today.
Our focus in this area is to stop terrorism-related activities from occurring and, over the longer-term, address some of the factors that facilitate terrorism and many other serious forms of criminal activity.
To achieve this, we are working to help strengthen relationships with our regional law enforcement colleagues and build capacity for fighting crime.
Much of this work is being led by the AFP's International Network, which today comprises 67 members at 32 posts in 26 countries.
As well as undertaking joint investigations and information sharing, the Network also has responsibility for implementing a range of education and training programs.
It has had much success in this endeavour over more than three decades, an example being our Kuala Lumpur office which is our longest continuously operating post now with 32 years of service. This capacity continues to foster relations and negotiate cooperative agreements between the AFP and foreign policing agencies to improve law enforcement outcomes.
Today the AFP is party to 9 Memoranda of Understanding.
Our MoU with the Indonesian National Police has, as I mentioned earlier, underpinned a particularly successful partnership that has yielded significant results across many aspects of law enforcement.
A recent example is our cooperative working relationship at the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC), a joint initiative between the Australian and Indonesian Governments.
The Centre is working to enhance the operational expertise of regional law enforcement personnel in dealing with transnational crime, in particular terrorism.
Over time, we hope it will become a regional hub for training police and analysts in areas such as the management of serious crime, investigations, criminal intelligence, forensics, financial investigations, communications, intelligence strategy and research.
The Centre has received international backing and courses in post bomb blast analysis and the international management of serious crime have recently been held, with the latter attracting participants from 19 countries.
It is also playing a valuable role in terms of promoting multilateral responses to fighting crime and developing regionally consistent approaches to policing.
We see these collaborative arrangements as integral to future directions in policing, where the stakes will remain high and criminals will become even more sophisticated.
Another significant initiative focused on the external environment is the government's new $100 million program 'Fighting Terrorism At Its Source". This provides training in areas such as intelligence support, language skills and cultural awareness; and it will also fund the building of bomb data centres in the region. It also provides the capacity for the AFP to respond and support other countries when asked to do so such as the Philippines government request mentioned earlier.
The importance of cultural awareness skills in multilateral partnerships was highlighted during Operation Deva - a drug investigation involving seven countries, which targeted the activities of Hong Kong and Malaysian based syndicates; as well as during the AFP's recent experience assisting with the disaster victim identification process in the aftermath of the tsunami in Thailand.
Although the AFP's role in the tsunami response fell outside its counter-terrorism function, our work over time with international colleagues and our assistance with investigations outside of Australia, equipped the AFP well to support the Royal Thai Police in the response to the catastrophe.
Representatives from some 30 countries were in Thailand offering assistance, and the AFP was asked to jointly manage the Disaster Victim Identification process by the Thai Government. A strategic decision by the AFP to obtain a written invitation from the Thai Government ahead of our deployment, proved to be an important dimension in the Australian law enforcement response.
Importantly, experiences such as these are also helping to build the AFP's own capacity in areas such as forensics, post-consequence management and investigations.
The success of our strategies in the external/proactive quadrant was illustrated last July, when a joint operation with the Indonesian National Police successfully thwarted a planned attack on the opening of the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
As a result, the Indonesians were able to make a number of significant arrests prior to the event and interrupt what was believed to be a planned attack by Jemaah Islamiyah.
As we learn more about how terrorists and organised crime groups operate, it is clear they scour the globe looking for new locations in which to carry out their activities. These include places where they have a reduced risk of being exposed and where they can operate with impunity while generating large profits or advancing the key objectives of their enterprise.
Nations struggling under the weight of economic and social hardship can be vulnerable targets of these groups.
When the Commissioner spoke to this conference last year, he outlined new plans for an International Deployment Group. The Group's role was to help build law enforcement capacity in the region, and ultimately promote greater security and prosperity.
One year on, the International Deployment Group is making significant inroads toward restoring law and order in places like the Solomon Islands.
Thousands of weapons have been removed from the streets, criminal gangs disrupted and many corrupt individuals extracted from the police and the public sector.
Prior to the regional intervention, one of the main problems in the Solomons went to the heart of regional security. Corrupt officials were handing out passports and visas to anyone. If people travel on documentation that can't be verified, this is obviously a clear threat to regional security.
More recently the International Deployment Group has deployed teams to assist our nearest neighbours in Papua New Guinea. The first contingent of personnel arrived in August 2004 and the aim of their mission is to work with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary to defeat organised crime groups and promote law, economic and social order.
This mission will involve up to 210 Australian assisting police and is expected to be a long-term project.
As part of the Australian Government's aid package to Papua New Guinea, Australia is also sending public sector officials to help strengthen economic management, improve border and transport security and to implement public sector reforms that will support the nation and its infrastructure over the longer term.
Finally, we turn our attention to the fourth quadrant in the security axis. This focuses on the internal/proactive arena of the counter terrorism environment, and covers some of the key security programs mentioned earlier by the Attorney-General, Mr Ruddock and my colleague Mr Andrew Metcalfe.
The number of security initiatives in this quadrant are far too numerous to mention, but from an AFP perspective, the role of the Joint Counter Terrorism Teams is of critical importance.
Not only are they delivering increased coordination and cooperation between police in all Australian jurisdictions, but they have been instrumental in key terrorism arrests and have successfully undertaken a number of exercises as Australia's frontline defence against threats.
One of their important tasks is to promote community linkages, which can be critical from an intelligence perspective and for disabling terrorist-related activity at an early stage.
Increasingly, we are seeing evidence of terrorists attempting to mask their fund-raising activities through legitimate business enterprises and engaging in crimes such as identity theft to help plan, finance and execute their offences and avoid detection.
Many of you would know that identity crime played a key role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The 19 hijackers were found to have used 364 false names, and 11 of them were suspected of using altered passports where the changes were detectable.
The operational coordinator and pilot of one of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Centre, Mohammad Atta, was trained as an expert document forger.
Our investigation into the Bali bombings also revealed that conspirators operated bank accounts under false names, rented the house where the planning was completed, regularly used aliases to avoid detection and shipped bomb-making materials using false identities and identification documents.
And similar methods were used by those behind the Madrid train bombings last year.
Here in Australia, identity crime is recognised as a serious and growing problem.
In 2003, a study conducted by the Securities Industry Research Centre of the Asia-Pacific (SIRCA) on behalf of AUSTRAC concluded that the cost of identity crime to Australia was in the order of $1.1 billion per year. Other estimates have put the costs as high as $4 billion per annum.
To illustrate this impact, this equates to the cost of employing, training and equipping an extra 16,500 police!
And the Aberdeen advisory Group has estimated that the global cost of identity crime by December this year would be $2 trillion.
This surge in identity crime can be largely attributed to advances in desktop publishing, which have significantly increased the capacity of criminals to fraudulently manufacture proof of identity documents.
For just a few thousand dollars, a high-end desktop publishing computer can be purchased, as well as professional graphic design software and a high quality printer to reproduce almost all paper-based documents.
Card-making equipment, capable of producing plastic cards at a rate of 500 per day, is also now commercially available.
Our own AFP investigations have revealed the sale of 'complete identity packages', including drivers licences, Medicare Cards, passports and birth certificates.
To try to combat this, the AFP has set up and leads a special operational taskforce, the Opal Group, comprising 13 Federal and State agencies, which exclusively investigates identity related crimes.
The group was established a year ago to coordinate and consolidate efforts by a range of agencies which either issue identity documents, such as passports and Medicare Cards, or are impacted on in some way by identity fraud. The coordination allows for a federal response to combating identity crime.
The taskforce is also working closely with other Government and industry groups to develop enhanced solutions to identity security issues.
In addition, the Business Government Advisory Group on National Security, established by the Federal Government last year, is also considering ways to reduce the impact of identity crime on the community.
Government and commercial collaboration in terms of intelligence exchange and information sharing, will be essential in minimising opportunities for criminals to steal or create identities.
…This snapshot of the AFP's response to the security environment shows our focus today is as much about preventing terrorism and other forms of crime as it is about reacting to them.
This leads me to some of the challenges we confront in the future.
Future challenges
I believe one of the biggest challenges lies in information management. The AFP is not just in the law enforcement business, but in the information business as well. Our job is about gathering information and managing it in a way that helps safeguard our community from crime.
The AFP's information and communications systems are fundamental to our ability to carry out our functions. As technology advances we need to be continually improving our methods for collecting, storing, analysing, manipulating and processing information. This applies to both the internal and external environments.
It is important to remember that advances in technology also serve those in the criminal world, including terrorists. We are set with the difficult task of remaining one step ahead in the technology race.
Maintaining a dynamic response to a rapidly changing environment also poses challenges in other areas.
For example we are currently working through a suite of recommendations for legislative change with the Attorney General's Department and other agencies including the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
Working through this ongoing process of legislative reform will help ensure we, in the profession of policing, are equipped to respond to current and emerging realities.
Part of the challenge is ensuring the contemporary experience of transnational law enforcement is reflected in policy debates and the development of structures, be they legislative, social or otherwise, designed to counter the terrorist threat.
Furthermore, we believe that processes for Mutual Assistance requests also need to be reviewed.
In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of requests for mutual assistance. Last financial year Australia made more than 160 requests for assistance to more than 70 countries - an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year.
Meanwhile, overseas requests to Australia also soared, up by nearly 80 per cent compared with 2001-2002.
These have covered assistance for a wide range of crimes, including terrorism, as well as for time-critical and multifaceted investigations and prosecutions.
In Australia, we have been making important strides in streamlining the processes for sharing material. This must continue so arrangements can keep pace with government reforms such as the newly enacted electronic surveillance device regime.
From an internal (domestic) perspective, we recognise the need to be continually improving information management systems - not just to improve the information flow from agency to agency, but from function-to-function within our own organisation.
At the AFP, we have been attempting to deal with this issue on a number of fronts through an organisational restructure that took place midway through last year, as well as through new approaches being adopted to enhance our intelligence-led policing model.
The AFP's National Manager Intelligence, Dr Grant Wardlaw, will discuss more about this when he addresses the conference tomorrow.
But essentially, it involves the development of an integrated system that promotes information sharing and coordination across the various disciplines within the AFP; as well as less duplication, and better processes for recording, cataloguing and disseminating information.
This streamlining task is not an easy one, as the AFP certainly does not suffer from a shortage of information. However, it is a critical task if we are to ensure we "join all the dots" in terms of identifying linkages and maximising our law enforcement response.
One further challenge that I'd like to mention is that posed by the Internet.
Just as it has revolutionised the way law abiding citizens go about their business, so too is it advancing the way terrorists and organised criminals operate.
Not only is it being used for communication between those people, but to facilitate and enable their activities.
For example, we know they purchase chemicals over the Internet to create explosives. They use it to create false identities for criminal acts. It is also being used for recruitment by extremist groups, for identifying possible targets for attack and for intelligence and research. We have also not lost focus on the use of the internet to facilitate other crime types including child pornography. New Commonwealth legislation to come into effect in March this year will enhance our efforts.
One of the difficulties with investigating crimes where the internet has been utilised, is that formal evidence gathering processes in countries hosting the Internet Service Providers must be followed.
As Internet Service Providers are located all over the world, this can be a time consuming and resource intensive task for police, in a time-critical environment.
These Internet Service Providers can also utilise privacy protection legislation of their host country, requiring Australian law enforcement agencies to use Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, which can create further delays.
To illustrate this point, if the AFP wishes to lodge a Mutual Assistance Request, our request must be processed by a number of Australian agencies before it is sent overseas.
Once the request has been received by the recipient country, it can then take significant additional time to be actioned. By the time the result is returned to Australia, it can be months since the original request was made.
By way of example, in July 2004 a mutual assistance request was prepared and sent overseas in relation to a web site that infected visitors' computers with a keylogging Trojan. This request was for details of the person who had registered the domain name, how payment was made for the service, and any log files or information that may assist in identifying those responsible for it. The answer to this request has not yet been received.
In the case of terrorism, where - as I mentioned - perpetrators rapidly and continually modify their approaches, these time delays create significant uncertainties and often fatally undermine an effective response.
Hence, if we want law enforcement to remain one step ahead, we need to find ways of expediting these information gathering processes in a way that does not undermine the sovereignty and laws of other nations, nor unnecessarily the privacy of its citizens.
While investigators confront these difficulties obtaining information from internet service providers located overseas, thankfully here in Australia, telecommunications law imposes obligations on telecommunications carriers and carriage service providers to cooperate with law enforcement agencies.
But having said all that, as well as being one of our biggest weaknesses, the Internet and communications technologies can be among our biggest strengths.
Every time information is passed through such networks, it leaves an indelible footprint and trail for investigators to follow, which is very difficult for criminals to erase.
Conclusion
In conclusion these are extraordinary times in the history of law enforcement, which present extraordinary challenges.
I've touched on just a few here today, but believe we have a lot to be optimistic about as we are making great advances in responding to new challenges as they arise.
The recent relief effort after the Asian tsunami, illustrated how the international community can rise to any challenge if the will and the cooperation are genuine.
I believe the secret to maintaining national security into the future lies in learning from experiences such as these and building on achievements of the past. It lies in trust, commitment and cooperation so we can not only fight crime from a multilateral perspective, but also collectively tackle it at its source.
Thank you.