Australia's law enforcement agencies, from ASIO down, could be poking around in your inbox, looking for evidence of criminal activity. Some say they have the right to protect national security, others say it's a gross infringement of an individual's privacy.

Privacy advocates say the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has the power to intercept emails, hack into encrypted communications and plant a Trojan Horse - all in the name of national security.

"Not without a search warrant from the Attorney General," a spokesperson for the Attorney General Mr Darryl Williams' office told ZDNet.

That authority is outlined in the Telecommunications (Interception) Act, 1997.

However, the National Director of Electronic Commerce at Gadens Lawyers, Adrian McCullagh, says that under the act, a warrant can be issued by the Attorney General, giving "ASIO an enormous amount of power."

McCullagh says there is a fundamental difference between obtaining a warrant through the justice department and going to a judge.

"It is giving the power to a politician to decide whether they should or shouldn't have the right to intercept communications. This takes the whole system out of the judicial checks and balances that are required," McCullagh said.

Under the ASIO Act, the agency is required to obtain a warrant from the Attorney General to intercept communications for national security reasons. However, if a response is not obtained within three months or the warrant is refused, the Director General of ASIO can issue a warrant under "his or her own hand," according to Gadens Lawyers' e-commerce group solicitor, Ben Cameron.

"If, by going through ordinary means the agency will experience delays, it can issue the warrant internally. There are however, regulations they must abide by," Cameron said.

According to the Attorney General's office, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security monitors the ASIO Act to ensure laws are being complied with.

However, the civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers Australia believes ASIO has far wider powes than it should have, although Director Irene Graham says intervening in communications is not going to happen very often and can be difficult to do.

"There needs to be a balance between individual privacy and police needs. What [the Act] is saying is 'it's ok to infringe on people's privacy on slim grounds'", Graham told ZDNet.

"It's allowing [ASIO] to poke around in innocent people's computers, hoping they'll find something that might lead to something else...and they don't breach the law," Graham said.

According to McCullagh, "it's a pretty wild piece of legislation and a far bigger issue than the RIP Act [in the United Kingdom]," which forces Internet Service Providers to monitor and store all communications.

"There are good and bad reasons [for] the legislation, however should ASIO have the right to hack and be able to dump a Trojan Horse on to a computer?" McCullagh said.

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