When it’s ok to wiretap and when it’s not ok to wiretap: the apparent liberal perspective

It’s recently surfaced that Princess Diana was bugged for a time in the 1990s – by the US:

American intelligence agencies were bugging Princess Diana’s telephone over her relationship with a US billionaire, the Mail’s sister paper has learned.

Evening Standard reports that she was even forced to abandon a planned holiday with her sons in the US with tycoon Teddy Forstmann on advice from secret services, who passed on their concerns to their British counterparts.

Both US and British intelligence then forced Diana to change her plans to stay with Mr Forstmann in the summer of 1997, saying it was too “dangerous” to take her sons there.

Instead the princess took the fateful decision to take a summer break with Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed. This ultimately led to her going to Paris with his son Dodi, where they died in a car crash.

The revelation from independent inquiries by the Evening Standard comes as it emerged that Princess Diana’s phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies on the night she died without the permission of the British secret intelligence services.

Authoritative leaks say the extraordinary revelations will be published this week by Lord Stevens and is bound to raise fresh questions about conspiracy theories.

The US secret service was monitoring Diana’s friendship with the controversial financier Mr Forstmann for some weeks.

Jason at TexasRainmaker speculates as to why the US was so interested in Mr. Forstmann’s phone calls and believes that he was being monitored because he was a potential Senatorial opponent to then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. He concludes, due to the lack of outrage being expressed by the usual lefty suspects:

Intelligence agencies under Republican President monitoring communications of potential terrorists = PROBLEM

Intelligence agencies under Democrat President monitoring communications of political rivals = NO PROBLEM

Yup.