CHARLES MIRANDA

In any other workplace, the memo that went around to staff that afternoon would have been met with mirth and derision and joked about around the staff lunchroom bench. But this is the headquarters of ASIO in Canberra and in the murky world of counter intelligence and sabotage, no warnings no matter how farfetched are taken lightly.

The staff missive in essence asked senior personnel to ensure pot plants were kept away from windows and exposed conference rooms since it was feared the Chinese had developed an eavesdropping radar that could take the tiny voice vibrations bounced by pot plant leaves and windows that with high tech equipment could be converted back to dialogue transcripts.

There was already evidence of the technology with the Japanese caught trialling a spy hack on the Australian embassy in Indonesian capital Jakarta using an infra-red targeted camera about half a kilometre away to “record” window pane vibrations for later processing and filtered conversations.

It may have all seemed ridiculously crude and in the early 2000s it was, but cyber hacking theft was still in its infancy as was the development of enveloping whole buildings with radar frequency interference screen technology.

But then like now the principle of foreign sourced theft and targeted espionage remains the same with ASIO now warning of a boom in organised crime groups and networks using the latest in technology to attempt to steal secrets from Australian industry, government and our own authorities to sell to the highest bidder whether state or commercial.

It’s no longer necessarily foreign governments and dispatched spies involved in