The latest NSA spying revelations involve international trade issues, in particular an Indonesian complaint brought at the WTO in response to a U.S. ban on clove cigarette. (The trade problem was that the U.S. banned clove cigarettes, which are mostly made in Indonesia, but did not ban menthol cigarettes, a competing U.S.-made product). According to the New York Times, the Australian government monitored communications between the Indonesian government and its DC-based trade lawyers, possibly in relation to this case, and passed the information along to the NSA. (Note that law prof Orin Kerr is skeptical about the way the story is presented in the Times.)

Let me offer the following thoughts:

1. It’s hard to imagine that any information gathered by the Australians had much impact on the WTO case. I suppose it could be a slight advantage to get an early look at your opponents’ arguments, and see how they are thinking about the issues. But I can also imagine that all this additional information would be a distraction, with too much time being spent on marginal points. It’s worth noting that, in spite of any information U.S. government trade lawyers may or may not have received, the U.S. lost the case. Thus, like most NSA spying, any spying here was probably of limited value.

2. Regardless of its value, this kind of spying is likely to be pretty offensive to our trading partners. The WTO has detailed rules of procedure for its disputes, one of which says the parties must act in good faith (“all Members will engage in these procedures in good faith in an effort to resolve the dispute”). It’s hard to see how receiving confidential information about your opponents’ arguments, if that happened, satisfies this requirement. It will be interesting to see if this gets discussed in upcoming WTO meetings.

3. I wonder whether all of these revelations about spying will accelerate proposals being made by foreign governments to develop non‑U.S.-based communications networks: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she would talk to French President Francois Hollande about building up a European communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the United States.”