The agreement between Washington and Canberra provides for intensified co-operation and intelligence sharing in GEOINT, geospatial intelligence derived from imagery and other information obtained from surveillance satellites and reconnaissance aircraft.
The agreement, signed in February 2008, has been revealed in a secret US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald.
Advertisement: Story continues below The cable reports that the then defence minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, and the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, signed a "statement of principles on geospatial intelligence co-operation" at a closed session of the Australia-United States Ministerial meeting in Canberra.
The US record of the AUSMIN meeting says the agreement is designed "to take GEOINT co-operation to the same level that signals intelligence has reached between the two countries.''
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Cyber Defense
The US military is preparing for 21st Century electronic warfare and cyber terrorism. A joint US Cyber Command and four service cyber commands have been set up.
Their mission is to defend American military networks and civilian American infrastructure from cyber terrorism and from foreign government hackers.
The officers leading these cyber commands explain how they are organized, how they operate, and how they will protect the United States from foreign military hackers, intelligence agencies, and cyber terrorists.
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