Intimate times

Dear Editor,

Tim Byrne, in his review of Meredith Burgmann’s Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files badly misread my complaints about my records. He writes that my [and Gary Foley’s] ‘movements were intimately tracked’. The whole point of my chapter was my disappointment that ASIO failed so miserably to track anything intimate, and that my files consisted largely of roneoed copies of articles already on the public record. Had ASIO tracked me more intimately, it may well have found information more interesting, at least for future social historians, if not perhaps for the security of the Australian state.

Dennis Altman, Clifton Hill, Vic.