Snowden documents reveal Australia tapped Indonesian president's Nokia: Report

During 2009, the Defence Signals Directorate tracked the mobile phone of Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for at least 15 days, the ABC is reporting.

Based on the latest leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the documents show that as well as the president, other members of his government that were targeted included Indonesia's First Lady, Vice President, former Vice President, Foreign Spokesman, Domestic Spokesman, State Secretary.

Another slide released shows the call data gained as result of the phone surveillance conducted during August 2009 on the President's Nokia handset.

Although many of the revelations from the Snowden documents have centred on the NSA, Australia has not escaped being caught up in the spying furore, with the Snowden documents previously showing that Australia was involved in using surveillance equipment in its embassies to gather intelligence

Last week, Indonesian hackers launched a denial of service attack on the website of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in retaliation to the claims that Australia had used its Jakarta embassy for spying.

In an interview with 7.30 last week, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that "all governments gather information" and that such revelations were "hardly a shock".

"We use the information that we gather for good, including to build a stronger relationship with Indonesia," said the Prime Minister.

"And one of the things that I've offered to do today in my discussions with the Indonesian Vice President is to elevate our level of information sharing, because I want the people of Indonesia to know that everything, everything that we do is to help Indonesia as well as to help Australia."

Australia is a member of the Five Eyes agreement that provides a framework for the sharing of intelligence amongst the United Kingdom, the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The Indonesian president is not the first head of state to learn that their communications were tapped, last month German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a phone call to US president Barack Obama, to be assured that American secret services were not monitoring her mobile phone, after reports in Der Spiegel stated that the president had been personally informed of US spies tapping Merkel's phones.

Following the allegations of spying on the Chancellor's phone, it was learned that the phones of 35 world leaders were being monitored by the NSA.