*ASIO is like the FBI/MI5, for those out there not from this part of the world...
Then, as I have explained before, we have ASIS, which is like MI6 or the CIA.
Finally, we have the ASD, which is like the NSA... I have no idea what the British equivalent of that is, to be honest...
ASD equals the "cool" one, which does most of the recruiting. ASIO is the "known" one, with pop culture references (generally evil, sometimes not), and ASIS... Is the shadowy, evil one...
But again, most people only know about ASIO.
So yeah, it's not... 1:1 interchangeable with the US equivalent, but you get the idea. None of them are "officially" allowed to carry guns, anymore. We have the AFP for that, who are... Something like a cross between the Secret Service, Capitol Police, the TSA, and the fucking stasi/gestapo..?
AFP are the ones who would probably come for me, for posting something like that, no joke...
It's nice that you guys have such a neat and manageable "intelligence community." At last count the US government had near-on 40 seperate, declassified Intel agencies, and that's not counting tangential stuff like the DEA.
I mean, yeah, I guess... These are just the ones I know about, though...
Given that the current government literally created a whole new "sub-cabinet" to give their favourite gestapo minister a whole bunch of additional powers ("Home Affairs", which is a Britishism, didn't exist before, and basically makes him responsible for overseeing a scary amount of shit), I'm sure there are innumerate "agencies", officially acknowledged or not, which I don't know about, lol...
But yes, in a sense. Remember we have less than 1/10th the US population, though, and a couple of hundred years less "history" as a colony per se...
When it comes down to it, though, it really just means that the AFP has all those powers you're thinking of, rolled into one, which could be both "good" and very, very bad, lol!
*ASIO is like the FBI/MI5, for those out there not from this part of the world...
Then, as I have explained before, we have ASIS, which is like MI6 or the CIA.
Finally, we have the ASD, which is like the NSA... I have no idea what the British equivalent of that is, to be honest...
ASD equals the "cool" one, which does most of the recruiting. ASIO is the "known" one, with pop culture references (generally evil, sometimes not), and ASIS... Is the shadowy, evil one...
But again, most people only know about ASIO.
So yeah, it's not... 1:1 interchangeable with the US equivalent, but you get the idea. None of them are "officially" allowed to carry guns, anymore. We have the AFP for that, who are... Something like a cross between the Secret Service, Capitol Police, the TSA, and the fucking stasi/gestapo..?
AFP are the ones who would probably come for me, for posting something like that, no joke...
It's nice that you guys have such a neat and manageable "intelligence community." At last count the US government had near-on 40 seperate, declassified Intel agencies, and that's not counting tangential stuff like the DEA.
I mean, yeah, I guess... These are just the ones I know about, though...
Given that the current government literally created a whole new "sub-cabinet" to give their favourite gestapo minister a whole bunch of additional powers ("Home Affairs", which is a Britishism, didn't exist before, and basically makes him responsible for overseeing a scary amount of shit), I'm sure there are innumerate "agencies", officially acknowledged or not, which I don't know about, lol...
But yes, in a sense. Remember we have less than 1/10th the US population, though, and a couple of hundred years less "history" as a colony per se...
When it comes down to it, though, it really just means that the AFP has all those powers you're thinking of, rolled into one, which could be both "good" and very, very bad, lol!