They wouldn't would they - charge WikiLeaks?

Australia's Attorney-General has flagged charging WikiLeaks members for their involvement in releasing confidential US military documents.

Speaking at the launch of an international cyber security exercise earlier this week, Attorney-General Robert McClelland expressed his disapproval of WikiLeaks's July release of tens of thousands of secret US documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. He said the release of the documents, 77,000 in total, had put lives at risk and he criticised WikiLeaks for making such a decision ''from the comfort of an office.'' ''Anything that puts those people - who are serving their country and protecting our security - at risk is entirely reprehensible, whether it's done for notoriety, or whether it's done for commercial interests,'' he said.

But he would not comment on allegations by a WikiLeaks insider that Australian intelligence agencies had been monitoring WikiLeaks's founder Julian Assange while he was in Australia, or whether they shared intelligence about him with agencies from the US, Britain and Sweden.

''It's not the sort of thing that I would comment on, but … we do co-operate in respect to a number of matters internationally,'' he said.

While Australia's top electronic intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, confirmed to The Age that it has not monitored Mr Assange, neither ASIO, ASIS nor the federal police would comment. ''For reasons of security and confidentiality, ASIO does not comment on individuals or groups with whom ASIO has or has not had contact with,'' the agency said.

The new claims come less than three weeks before the expected release by WikiLeaks of another massive tranche - four times as big as the Afghan logs released two months ago - of secret US government documents, this time about the war in Iraq. The release is expected to involve almost 400,000 new documents.