Public Trust in Australia’s Law Enforcement Agencies and Collecting National Security Intelligence Data

Recently, Australia’s understanding of what constitutes national security has changed. As its outlook changes, so has the Intelligence Community that was once responsible for these issues. As a result, these changes have had implications for public trust. In Australia, the concern for national security was outwardly focused—agencies looked at foreign threats. Yet, now, national security extends to ideological and politically generated domestic threats—acts of terrorism within the country. The doctrinal shift in what constitutes national security has rightly taken aim at domestic terrorism. However, what amounts to a domestic terrorist and/or terrorist organization will be argued is becoming less clear because law enforcement intelligence units have not ventured into this sphere of enforcement before. These changes have had an impact on the Australian Intelligence Community since the federal government’s 2017 Independent Intelligence Review gave greater powers to law enforcement agencies to move beyond desk-based scans of the criminal environment and criminal target identification to conduct interventional operations. This article contends that these new law enforcement powers have impacted public trust. In the long term, this problem may demean exemplary practices by those the public needs to trust unless high standards of ethical conduct are maintained

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• The Cyberfare State

  Open Access•Roland Kelemen•Frontiers in Political Science•2026

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