It's not just that international calls may be monitored. It's the fact that international calls to (and other business dealings with) certain places or groups of people are significantly more likely to be monitored, and this creates an incentive to avoid contact with those groups, assuming one wishes to avoid government surveillance. And what matters more is really the perception that dealing with these groups will attract government attention, even if it's not actually true.

Racism may not be the right term, but the point is that the possibility of government spying incentivizes businesses to share in that government's (perceived) prejudices.