Why not? I definitely consider cameras recording our every move in public to be spying/surveillance. It is one thing for a person to see something in public. Quite another to have automated systems recording and analyzing everything for all time.
If you target an individual using the vast resources of the government for exercising his\her rights under the Constitution... would it not be much worse than spying?
Would it surprise you - given the well-documented behavior of the Federally-supported ICE agents - that this "leak" was a strategic (insidious) move? We've seen this behavior before on numerous occasions across social media that it should not surprise any of us. Or am I reaching...?
[note: his account (/u/Budget-Chicken-2425) has been suspended. I don't know if it happened before or after the leak. This is important to know too.]
Perhaps this is another calculated move to intimidate American citizens from exercising their Constitutional rights under the First Amendment?
Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition (and religion).
And if so... the very Constitution is under attack when these protected rights are reframed as homeland threats. Would you consider this a valid position?
Yes, if the government asks someone to do that on their behalf and you are literally doing that you could easily hit a United States vs Carpenter violation.
To clarify, even if it is not strictly "spying" by some particular definition, the scope and scale is so large, and the channels to direct actual "spying" resources towards potentially relevant targets that are unveiled through OSINT methods really blur the lines.