Mike Burgess,who heads the normally highly secretive ASD,brought his organisation “out of the shadows” on Wednesday,with an address to the Lowy Institute in Sydney and a round of media interviews.
He said that as soon as the shooter was"deemed a threat to security” Friday week ago,ASD sought and gained ministerial authorisation to help with the Christchurch investigation.
But he rejected suggestions Australian authorities had taken their eye off right-wing extremism because of an overly narrow focus on radical Islamic-inspired terror.
“Cyber-extremism,regardless of the ideological cause,is always going to be taken seriously,and is of great interest to Australia’s law enforcement and security agencies,” Mr Burgess said.
Asked if ASD could play a part in preventing or disrupting live-streaming of such events,Mr Burgess said the organisation’s “offensive cyber capability” had that potential but “would not likely be the first port of call when that’s happening”.
He said the government’s call to social media companies to find ways of dealing with the problem was “the right way of doing it - not going straight to ‘lets unleash ASD to take down a video-stream.’.. Just like we do in our print and TV media,the[social media] industry should be no different in terms of the obligations on those service providers.”
Mr Burgess made it clear that his decision to raise ASD’s public profile was part of a recruitment drive with the organisation planning to hire “many hundreds of people” in coming years.
The directorate was actively seeking a diverse workforce,he said.