AN0M in the High Court – CD v Commonwealth [2025] HCA 37

Rohan Balani

‘Operation Ironside’ was one of the largest covert investigations by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) alongside overseas law enforcement authorities, into transnational and serious organised crime. The operation sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood movie. Operation Ironside involved the distribution of 921 mobile telephone devices throughout Australia between October 2018 and June 2021 which had installed on them an application known as ‘AN0M’. When users composed a message on the ANOM application and pressed ‘send’ to transmit the message to the intended recipient, a separate second message was created (which contained a copy of the first message alongside additional metadata) which was, unbeknownst to the sender, made available on a server accessible by the AFP (AN0M messages). Between October 2018 and June 2021, approximately 28 million AN0M messages were sent to the AFP server, leading to almost 1,000 arrests and 400 offenders being charged with offences. The AFP accessed the AN0M messages under warrants issued under the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 (Cth) and the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth).