PETA's Thought Police

The office I work in gets regular copies of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper documenting recent news in academia. One article this week caught my eye: Undercover Among the Cages.

It's common knowledge that PETA doesn't like it when other people experiment on animals. Now, thanks to advances in hidden camera technology, PETA sympathizers are increasingly inflitrating research labs. They record how the animal subjects are treated in an effort to encourage more government enforcement of the morality laws surrounding lab animal welfare.

Not once does the article question the ethical bedrock of what PETA is doing, even when it metnions the inflitration Columbia University (a private organization) in 2003. Instead it frames the spying as investigative journalism. To be clear, investigative journalism tries to demonstrate when an organization cheats (like scams and rip-offs) people. What PETA is doing is violating people's rights to privacy and liberty to push their own agenda.

This is not dissimilar to the illegal wire-tappings the Bush administration is engaging in: both of them steal away privacy to impose their will, their version of ethics, onto others. Big Brother is watching you.