Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is an Australian organization that gathers and evaluates information that its director general considers relevant to the security of the country. Much of this information is secret. The attorney general is responsible to Parliament for ASIO. The federal government established ASIO in 1949 primarily to track down spies believed to be passing Australian military secrets to the Soviet Union. Uncovering spies remained a major focus of the ASIO’s activities throughout the Cold War—a period from the late 1940’s to the early 1990’s that was marked by tensions between Communist and non-Communist nations. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the organization’s powers were expanded to cover the investigation of terrorism and acts of political violence.
