THE noun “Der Shitstorm” made a timely entrance to the official German lexicon this week. France is in a similar “avalanche d’emmerdements”. So, too, are countries as far afield as Japan, India and Turkey, which are also digesting revelations about the nature and extent of America’s electronic espionage on them.

Material leaked to Germany’s Der Spiegel and Britain’s Guardian by Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency, says its programmes “can and often do target the signals” of around 30 “third-party” states, with which America has otherwise friendly ties. It spied on, among other targets, the European Union’s diplomatic headquarters in Brussels, using NATO premises to do so. The NSA exempts only a handful of close “second-party” allies, chiefly Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

The news that even fairly friendly states spy on each other is less surprising than some politicians may admit. World-weary insiders argue that a dose of spying is not just inevitable in negotiations—it speeds them. America publicly ranks France along with Israel and Russia as a cyber-espionage menace. Only China is worse. Ecuador said on July 2nd that it had found a bug in its London embassy, which shelters Mr Snowden’s ally, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. (He sought asylum there to avoid a Swedish extradition order for questioning in two sex-assault cases.) American official responses so far have been laconic, noting that the United States does indeed have intelligence agencies and welcomes discussions with its allies. [Link]