Special Investigative Powers
The ASIO Act defines the special investigative powers available to the Organisation under warrant signed by the Attorney-General:
- interception of telecommunications;
- examination of postal and delivery articles;
- use of clandestine surveillance and tracking devices;
- remote access to computers, including alteration of data to conceal that access;
- covert entry to and search of premises, including the removal or copying of any record or thing found therein; and
- conduct of an ordinary or frisk search of a person if they are at or near a premises specified in the warrant.
The Director-General also has the power to independently issue a warrant in situations where a warrant has been requested of the Attorney-General but not yet granted, and a serious security situation arises.
Read more about this topic: Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or powers:
“When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust with the powers that be, have carried this county [Hamilton County, Ohio] by between seven and eight thousand majority! How people do hate Catholics, and what a happiness it was to show it in what seemed a lawful and patriotic manner.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)