Australia's domestic spy agency found itself at the centre of a rolled gold kerfuffle earlier this week after it asked journalists to avoid publishing some maps that were used in a photo with Prime Minister Tony Abbott and ASIO head Duncan Lewis as they were for "official use only".

You may recall the Labor Party using question time to try to "condemn" the government for "putting politics before the security of Australians".

"By revealing sensitive information of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation for the sake of a media opportuntiy."

You may also recall that ASIO had to issue a clarifying statement that the maps - which showed which suburbs Australians who had gone to fight overseas had come from - were not national security classified after all (and therefore not compromising the security of the country).

Thus thoroughly confusing everyone about what the problem was in the first place.

But just as the map flap dies down, military analyst James Brown has brought fresh attention to another large map that featured in the Prime Ministerial photo op.

It turns out that the map that Mr Abbott and Mr Lewis can be seen pointing at, that shows Islamic State's presence in the Middle East - bears an uncanny resemblence to one created by The Washington Post.

A year ago.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Australia did not have a taxpayer-funded map-producing organisation of its own.

To date, ASIO has made no polite requests to media organisations asking them not to publish the back-drop map.

One supposes that if the "intelligence" comes from a globally famous newspaper, there are fewer concerns about enemies stealing our secrets.

Shhh.

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