Call It Espionage, Because That's What It Is

If you go about cutting billions from defence budgets, you're not going to be popular with those who rely on ever increasing defence budgets to maintain their international arms industry relationships, and lifestyles :

Australia's defense department has secretly investigated ties between the defense minister's family and a Chinese-Australian businesswoman as a potential security threat, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The report will likely increase the tension between the defense bureaucracy and Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon who recently described his department as "incompetent" in its handling of a pay dispute within the elite Special Air Service Regiment.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said defense department intelligence and security officials recently examined the 16-year relationship between Fitzgibbon's family and Sydney-based Helen Liu.

Looking for something they could smear him with, via the Murdoch tabloids. They didn't find anything, and now another nefarious spying scandal has broken into the mainstream media. An immediate investigation has been launched, and of course the Defence Department will be investigating itself.

If Australia's intelligence agencies are spying on and hacking into the laptop of the fucking defence minister, imagine what they're doing to the computers, and online lives, of mere citizens of this country?

Bernard Keane at Crikey has lots more.