Goldfinger, as the James Bond film's title song had it, was the man with the Midas touch.

But one of Australia's spies from ASIO might be called Fatfinger, the man with the clumsy touch, after a series of wrong phones were bugged because incorrect numbers were entered.

Margaret Stone, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, says spies are not perfect.

The intelligence agency watchdog has revealed the mistakes as part of a vibrant defence of the nation's spies, who she says are human beings doing a difficult job, inevitably subject to the same flaws as the rest of us.

Providing rare insight into the office that has unfettered access to all six of the nation's major intelligence agencies, including ASIO and ASIS, Margaret Stone, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, said Australians needed to understand that spies were not perfect.