The USTR urges countries to enact new and higher criminal penalties for the “theft” of trade secrets. Yet the last leak of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement’s Intellectual Property chapter revealed language on trade secrets that is so dangerously broad that it could be used to crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers who reveal corporate wrongdoing “through a computer system.” If this is the kind of language that the USTR holds as a minimum standard for enforcement, we should expect to see the agency to increasingly push for draconian rules that would threaten critical reporting published online.