Telstra was compelled to strike a 2001 deal with the FBI and the US Department of Justice to give them surveillance access to the undersea cables owned by its subsidiary Reach, a new document released online and provided to Crikey reveals.
The document shows Telstra, at that stage majority-owned by the Howard government, and its partner Pacific Century Cyber Works (now PCCW), then controlled by Hong Kong businessman Richard Li, agreed to provide the FBI with around-the-clock access to Reach’s cables to spy on communications going into and out of the United States. It is signed by Telstra’s then-company secretary Douglas Gration, then-deputy assistant US attorney-general John G. Malcolm, Alex Arena of PCCW, Alistair Grieve of Reach and Larry R. Parkinson of the FBI.
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