[Lagged2Death]

This doesn't add up for me yet, because I don't understand what the supposed motive is.

Authoritarians (like cops, broadly speaking) have always tried to spy on people who might subvert their own authority and the status quo, like protestors, activists, and the journalists who cover such things and who keep in touch with such people. It has ever been thus.

Social reformers sometimes actually change things - think of the labor movement, the civil rights movement - but foreign terror against random civilians usually only re-enforces the social order and the status of cops. The cops are, and have historically been, more concerned with domestic journalists than with foreign terrorists or even actual criminals.

"Cops caught spying on journalists and activists, won't even apologize" has been a pretty common headline for many decades.