Well, there are reasons. I think it’s a species of the “broken windows” approach to fighting crime: If you hammer “little” actions, you prevent big ones.
In addition, you make an example of prominent people. You get people saying, “Holy crap! If it can happen to them it can happen far more easily to ME!” It is a form of terrorism, where anyone is vulnerable, and the point is to frighten people into compliance…
The Washington Times noted that Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute obtained redacted documents showing that U.S. Postal Service inspectors monitored the mail of some American citizens. The impetus for the move? These people were gun rights activists and had issues with the election of Joe Biden. The office spied on gun activists who attended a gathering in Richmond, Va., what the Times calls “far-right” groups who went to D.C. after Biden’s election, and even those who gathered to protest the shooting of Breonna Taylor. [emphasis added]
… So ambition, mixed with indignation, ego, and a healthy dose of paranoia will allow things to happen in a country whose inhabitants could never have imagined such a situation just three years ago. If you are one of those people and are reading this, is what you are doing worth the price of your soul? Do you really think that you are “protecting democracy” by doing the things that totalitarians do? Or are you just telling yourself that you are only following orders to protect your pension? How many lives need to be wrecked for you to keep a pension? How much money will let you sleep at night? If you can’t or won’t answer those questions, then you are on your way to joining a long list of people whom history has come to despise. [emphasis added]
So if YOU are on the side of the despots, here, YOU need to take a hard look at your own morality…
And if you, like me, are a small-time dissident whose absence only a handful will even note in passing, you are in grave danger!
And THAT is the point of these despots.