Australia is to boost its intelligence sharing with the US customs and border protection service.

The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, said the Australian and US customs and border protection agencies had agreed to a formal strategic partnership from 2014, which would see two Australian officers posted to the US to strengthen intelligence co-operation.

Morrison said a trial of the closer engagement over the past year led to a crackdown on organised crime and resulted in several major drug seizures.

“These results demonstrate that governments must work together to effectively combat transnational crime and terrorism,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

The move to strengthen intelligence sharing with the US comes after a former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden leaked thousands of secret documents, including details of how Australian spies targeted the phone of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Source: theguardian.com