“Witness K” convicted for exposing Australia’s illegal bugging in East Timor A former senior Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer, known publicly only as “Witness K,” was sentenced to a suspended jail term last Friday. His “crime” was to blow the whistle on the Howard Liberal-National government’s use of ASIS to plant a listening device in East Timor’s cabinet room in 2004 during crucial oil and gas negotiations. While “Witness K,” now 70, was spared immediate imprisonment after pleading guilty to breaching his secrecy obligations as an intelligence official, the current Liberal-National government and the magistrate presiding over the case insisted that he had to be punished to “send a message” on “national security.”