So Why Isn’t Wiretapping FOX As Bad As Operation COINTELPRO?

From media reports, FOX News reporters (and others) have suffered phone tappings, emails read, and all sorts of other completely inappropriate government behavior.

None of these people are even suspected of being in the employ of a foreign government.

None of these people are suspected of setting bombs across the country, or participating in other acts of terrorism.

All of these people are suspected of receiving information from bureaucratic blabbermouths who are not supposed to be blabbing secrets about North Korea, or anything else that they work on.  I know, I used to be one of those bureaucrats and I was fully aware that I was not supposed to go telling what I knew to people without an official need to know.

So, on that item of wiretapping the relatives of reporters.  That was a technique used in Operation COINTELPRO, and pretty much all of those targets were working for or connected to people working for the Soviet Union.  Part of the fallout was evidence against the Weather Underground and Bill Ayers getting tossed.  As Ayers is proud to say, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird.” I cannot count how many times Leftists I have known invoke that program and cry about how relatives of targets were wiretapped, and defend Ayers at the same time.

So what is the deal now?  Where is the Hammer and Sickle Left outrage that relatives of targets were wiretapped?  Perhaps it has more to do with the politics of enslaving the entire planet than with principles of liberty.

Follow Steve @AustrianAnarchy or view his Austrian Anarchy blog.  His work-in-progress, “The Anarchist’s Soufflé Book“, should be done any year now.