Australia spied on Indonesia’s talks with U.S. law firm for the NSA

Indonesia has said Australia and America need to “clean up their mess” to salvage relations with Indonesia after revelations that Australia spied on a law firm representing Indonesia in a trade dispute. New documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the Australian Signals Directorate  spied on an American law firm representing Indonesia in a trade dispute and offered the information to America, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers. A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance.