The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is Australia's foreign intelligence service, roughly equivalent to the British Secret Intelligence Service or the Central Intelligence Agency. However, its role is considerably more circumscribed.
ASIS was established on 13 May 1952, but the highly secretive agency was not publicly acknowledged by the Federal Government until 1977. The agency primarily focuses on intelligence gathering in the Asia-Pacific region; it appears its primary focus is Indonesia, and in particular people-smuggling operations as well as the activities of Islamic militants in that region.
It is legally banned from any paramilitary activities and there are no reports of it being involved in any, since a spectacularly botched training exercise held at the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne on Wednesday, 30 November 1983, in which trainee agents were subsequently arrested by police (in a reportedly drunken state) and threatened with prosecution for a long list of offences.
Unwelcome attention for the agency was also garnered by the outing of a bugging operation on the Chinese embassy in 1990, and allegations of misconduct and unprofessionalism levelled at the agency by former employees in 1994.
ASIS is also not primarily responsible for the high-level analysis and reporting of the data it collects, a task performed by the Office of National Assessments.
ASIS is Australia's external Intelligence Collection Agency and it is a part of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Almost all ASIS staff are employed outside of Australia and the agency is specifically a 'collection only' agency. This means that ASIS does not undertake analysis of the material obtained. Rather, ASIS passes this material to other agencies, (ASIO, DSD or Office of National Assessments) where the analysis takes place.
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