Australia and East Timor negotiated a treaty to divide up oil and gas in the sea between the two countries. Australia bugged the East Timorese government offices to get an unfair advantage in the negotiations.
The East Timorese government found about this, and then sued Australia in the Permanent Court of Arbitration to have the treaty invalidated.
An Australian intelligence agent (''Witness K''), who knew about the bugging, contacted East Timor's lawyer – Australian Bernard Collaery – offering to testify for East Timor.
The Australian government responded by cancelling Witness K's passport to stop him from testifying, raiding the offices of East Timor's lawyer, and now both of them are on trial – in secret.
The word on the street that the extremity of the "in secret" part is the Director of Public Prosecutions, Christian Porter, protecting old party mate, Alexander Downer, to keep his name out of the mud for as long as possible, as it's likely he was the top of the chain of authorization for the bugging, being that he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time and was outspoken against East Timor for accusing Australia of spying.
The problem is that in protecting one person's reputation they're ruining the reputation of an entire country.
It's exactly the job of the Australian intelligence agencies to protect for the countries interests and gain advantages where they can.
This case is even more reasonable as it's a country spying on a country so both parties have the opportunity do so.
The NSA has directly spied on corporations (Airbus) and passed the information to their own corporations (Boeing) in the past which seems less acceptable to me.
There's obviously something fairly deeply wrong with it, or wrong with it being known by the Australian public, given the government's efforts at suppressing it.
