Overview

• Under the new rule, top-secret clearance holders who post about their status online will automatically lose their clearance.
• ASIO identified more than 35,000 individuals on a professional networking site claiming access to classified information, with almost 2,500 explicitly stating they held security clearances.
• In the past three years ASIO disrupted 24 major espionage and foreign interference operations, surpassing the total of the previous eight years.
• Recent incidents include spies recruiting a clearance holder to access free-trade negotiation documents and convincing a bureaucrat to gather names and addresses of dissidents.
• In early 2025 the government shifted responsibility for top-level security clearances to ASIO as part of broader institutional reforms.