Anonymous shut down Australian spy agency

Anonymous have shut down a computer server belonging to Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO, reportedly briefly closing down access to its public webpage. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) acknowledged some disruption to its website.

"ASIO is aware that there may have been some technical issues with its public website," a spokesperson said.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that ASIO's website was down for at least 30 minutes Friday morning, but it appeared to be loading normally Friday afternoon. Operation Australia, which has its own @Op_Australia Twitter stream said it would "stop the attacks at 10pm Aus. BUT we will never stop watching!".

The personal and departmental websites of Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, the ruling Labor party's South Australia branch and Tasmania police sites were also targeted in the plot. It appeared linked to a controversial government plan to store the web history of all Australians for up to two years which was shelved Thursday until after the 2013 elections.

Anonymous attacked Australian government websites

Anonymous took at least 10 Australian government websites offline in a series of escalating attacks over proposed changes to privacy laws. Anonymous has warned it will continue the attacks on “.gov.au” sites until any plans to force ISPs to store user data and make it further available to security services are shelved. The attacks started after Prime Minister Julia Gillard answered policy questions via webcam in an online Google+ Hangout session on Saturday.

“The Australian Government is attempting to strip away its citizens’ internet rights by forcing them to surrender passwords and internet usage data,” Anonymous said via email to a news site. “Unless the Government starts acting in the best interest of its people, it will continue to bring the noise.”  “We no longer know about many of the activities of our governments while our governments have the means to accumulate unprecedented vast banks of data about us.”

A spokesman from the Queensland Premier’s office confirmed hackers had attacked a number of State Government and non-Government websites on an external service provider’s server on Sunday, including several that were no longer operational. He said the external service provider had since rebuilt the server and applied new security patches to remove the vulnerability.