Australian Foreign Minister’s cellphone tapped during fight over access to MH17 zone

An unidentified nation state compromised Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop’s mobile device while she was overseas negotiating to get Australian police into the crash area.

It is believed that Australian intelligence agencies know which country is responsible for hacking Bishop’s phone.

“It is understood that intelligence officers replaced her phone after becoming aware of a problem with it,” according to the Herald Sun, which opted not to reveal what that problem was.

Bishop was on a two-week trip to the United States, Ukraine and Holland.

The Malaysia Airlines disaster killed 38 Australians.

“MH17’s downing caused the most serious rift with Russia in decades and led to calls for President Vladimir Putin to be banned from November’s G20 meeting in Brisbane,” the Herald Sun reports. “Last weekend [Bishop] said Russia’s claims that it was moving people and equipment into Ukraine for humanitarian purposes would be viewed as a ‘transparent artifice.’”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded furiously, saying Bishop has gone farther than others in making irresponsible innuendos against Moscow “even though one would think that her position presupposes building bridges between countries, not destroying them.”