Australia's domestic spy agency likes doing things on the quiet, but has turned out to be one of Canberra's noisiest neighbours.
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Five federal government agencies have had to be called in to try to sort out the racket emanating from the hulking Ben Chifley building on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.
Residents of leafy lakeside suburb of Campbell expected ASIO to live up to its hush-hush reputation but instead had to call in security and intelligence authorities as the giant building's alarms continually shattered the night's calm, driving one resident to distraction.
The local wrote to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security in March after a year of sleepless nights and getting no joy in directing their complaints to the spy bosses.
The complaints from neighbouring Campbell, which is popular with families from Canberra's military and intelligence communities, are the latest problems for the trouble-plagued project.
The Ben Chifley building, never popular with locals, was two years late and $200 million over budget and reportedly infiltrated by Chinese spies before it was even occupied, although ASIO dismisses the hacking claims.
The most persistent headache has been the tendency of the giant glass panels that form the building's frontage to simply fall off.
Fairfax Media revealed in early 2014 that Campbell residents were complaining of sleepless nights caused by the building's alarms.
One neighbour complained to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security that the alarm "... continually goes off, often in the middle of the night waking our whole family and our neighbours.
"I have found it hard to find someone who actually cares about the problem as there doesn't appear to be anyone in the actual building when I have gone down there when the alarms are going off.
"This problem has gone on for the last year and must not be allowed to continue."
In her annual report, Inspector-General Margaret Stone described a very unhappy complainant.
"The complainant suggested that either the alarm systems were faulty or the operators were incompetent, and that ASIO was unresponsive in addressing local residents' concerns about the resulting noise and disruption caused in their otherwise peaceful neighbourhood," the Inspector-General wrote.
Ms Stone confirmed that that five Commonwealth agencies were called in to try to help silence the racket.
ASIO, the Finance Department, the National Capital Authority, the Inspector-General's office and the Commonwealth Ombudsman have all been on the case, the Inspector-General noted .
Ms Stone said ASIO had advised that the problems with the building's alarms had been resolved.
"We also separately reviewed ASIO's files which indicated that ASIO, the building owner (the Department of Finance), the body responsible for property on which the new ASIO building sits (the National Capital Authority) and the contractor responsible for installing the alarm system, were acutely aware of the issue and were working as quickly as they could to address the issue," she wrote.
