Australia's domestic counterintelligence service, responsible (in coordination with the Federal Police) for preventing espionage by foriegn powers, and attempting to monitor and prevent terrorist and other political violence. It is approximately equivalent to Britain's counterintelligence service, MI5.
ASIO came to prominence in the 1950's with the Petrov affair. Throughout the 1960's, like other Western intelligence agencies it monitored the activities of Vietnam War protestors and others on the political left (some of whom were involved in espionage for the Soviet Union but many more who were not and whose monitoring amounted to little more than harassment). The distrust engendered in the Australian Labor Party led to a raid on the ASIO offices by the new Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy. (Probably in 1972 when Labor won office? It pays to spell this sort of thing out explicitly because otherwise some readers might thing it happened in 2002.)
- Yes, it was the 1970's, which should be cleared up. I'll check the details in my book on Whitlam. --Robert Merkel
See also :: Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Defence Signals Directorate.