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Australia’s top secret cyber centre decoded at new exhibition

Eliza Sayon Apr 12, 2022

2 min read

The National Museum of Australia has unveiled a new exhibition offering an unprecedented glimpse of the Australian Signals Directorate.

The behind-the-scenes story of the country’s oldest intelligence organisation will be told via a three-month exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

The electronic spy agency was kept secret from the public until 2005, and even its central workings were not made known to prime ministers until the government raids on the offices of ASIO in 1973.

Formed after WWII to tackle code-breaking, the ASD recruited the US and Australian army and RAAF intel staff and officers from the Melbourne-based Fleet Radio Unit to intercept Japanese military communications.

In 1947, the Australian Government then established a permanent signals agency, which was initially called the Defence Signals Bureau, in the Department of Defence.

The organisation underwent many name changes over the last few decades before settling with the Australian Signals Directorate in 2013.

With its quaint mission statement “reveal their secrets, protect our own”, the ASC has expanded its mission by providing cyber security expertise to governments, businesses and individuals, and preventing and disrupting offshore cyber-enabled crime.

It also continues to gather foreign intelligence and support military operations, and, according to the National Museum, boasts the people and technology needed to safeguard the cybersecurity of all Australians.

Aside from this, the ASD has also launched the REDSPICE program which will churn through roughly $10 billion in federal funding and involve the deployment of 1900 data analysts, computer programmers and software engineers over the next decade.

According to the museum’s exhibition blurb, the ASD “proudly operates in the slim area between the difficult and the impossible, recruiting the best and brightest”.

Highlights of the exhibition include early cipher, codes and encryption, and feature presentations on the Cold War, the evolution of the Five Eyes partnership, key military operations, the post-911 war on terror and contemporary cyber-crime challenges.

The exhibition also offers an interactive game for visitors to work as a team to defeat cybercriminals and a central experience showcasing untold stories of ASD staff.

“It brings all of us great joy to share the history of ASD,” ASD’s Director-General Rachel Noble said.

“So many of our former and current staff have never been able to tell anyone much about the work they have done. The exhibition is a celebration of their amazing work over 75 years and I’m sure for more than 75 years to come.”

For National Museum director Dr Mathew Trinca, the history of the directorate mirrors that of the maturing of Australia as a nation.

“We hope all Australians who are able to visit the exhibition will leave with an appreciation of the role of this crucial but often unrecognised, work by the men and women at the cyber security frontline,” he said.

Visitors of the exhibit will also get to see Typex Mark 23, the Allied equivalent of the German ENIGMA machine used for secret wartime communications, and the Speakeasy, an Australian device developed in the 1990s using voice encryption to secure calls over the public phone network.

And as a reminder of the ever-present threat of terrorism, the exhibition also features the Australian coat of arms shattered by the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in September 2004.

The National Museum of Australia’s exhibition DECODED: 75 years of the Australian Signals Directorate runs until July 24.

With AAP

Eliza Sayon

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Eliza is a content producer and editor at Public Spectrum. She is an experienced writer on topics related to the government and to the public, as well as stories that uplift and improve the community.