Feature interview: ASIO Director General Mike Burgess on encryption and access

Risky Business

Mike Burgess is the director general of ASIO. But the thing about Mike is he’s actually a cybersecurity guy. He joined ASD, Australia’s NSA, back in 1995 when it was still the Defence Signals Directorate. He was there for 18 years before he bounced out to the private sector for a while to work as the CISO for Australia’s largest telco, Telstra. In 2017 he returned to ASD to run it, and in 2019 he was appointed director general of ASIO.

Back in April, Burgess made a series of comments on the topic of encrypted messaging during a Press Club speech in Canberra. Our right to privacy, he said, is not absolute, and he implied that if certain providers didn’t start helping Australian authorities out a little more, he’d use some of the provisions in Australia’s Assistance and Access bill to force them to provide access to certain content.

So I reached out to organise this interview to get some more detail from him about exactly what sort of cooperation he’s seeking and why.