indonesian response to deteriorating situation, page-217

PLOUGH

Mobile Phone spying was going on long before the Gillard/Rudd government and I Im pretty sure it was implemented during the Howard years.
SIGINT has been going on since Army's started using Radio's.
Most of the world engages in SIGINT/ELINT, its not a bad thing as it allows everyone to have a better idea of what is going on in the world. If we all knew what was going on governments would be less likely to do the horrific things that some have done.

This is the information age and SIGINT/ELINT is a very big and widely used form of information gathering.