Monitoring DIO and ONA

As has been the practice of this office over many years, we continued to exercise a light touch inspection regime with respect to the activities of ONA and DIO. As these agencies do not directly collect covert intelligence, their activities are far less likely than those of the collection agencies to intrude upon the personal affairs of Australian persons.

We aim to review the compliance of ONA and DIO with their respective privacy guidelines at least twice a year, via privacy guidelines inspections. In 2014–15 we undertook three such inspections of DIO, and two of ONA.

These inspections revealed that ONA and DIO are generally compliant with the requirements of their privacy guidelines and that they each take their privacy responsibilities seriously. To the extent that non-compliance issues were identified these tended to be administrative in nature and there was no evidence that intelligence was passed in breach of the guidelines.