Macri administration caught spying on two leading opposition journalists.

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Leaked documents from Argentina's Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) reveal that the Mauricio Macri administration has been illegally spying on two leading opposition journalists.

The targeted journalists, Mauro Federico, 49, and Gustavo Sylvestre, 53, co-host the top-rated nightly economic current events program Minuto Uno (First Minute) and had been critical of the right-wing Macri administration over its austerity policies, the deepening recession, the Panama Papers and dollar futures corruption scandals, and other controversies.

Both took to Twitter to express rejection and concern over the revelations. "I'm not surprised," Sylvestre noted; "but it is very serious and the government should give an immediate response." Sylvestre added that this is part of a pattern of harassment that began when his SUV was destroyed by arson in 2014 in an as-yet unsolved incident that he believes was planned.

Federico, who is also editor-in-chief of Argentina's leading business daily Ámbito Financiero, stated that "the intelligence services are so incompetent they leave their fingerprints on every act of wrongdoing they commit. Nevertheless, we musn't let them off for these things."

This isn't the first time Macri has come under fire for using warrantless surveillance against critics, or even personal rivals.

He and the head of his newly-created Metropolitan Police, Jorge "Fino" Palacios, were indicted in 2009 for running illegal wiretaps on among others Sergio Burstein (head of the main victims' rights group representing relatives of those killed in the 1994 AMIA Jewish community center attack), bidding competitors of his father's (a top local contractor), and Macri's own brother-in-law (with whom his father had a dispute). The charges were dropped last December, two weeks after taking office as president.

Nor was this the first time journalists critical of his administration have been harassed.

While sacking public radio and television hosts seen as critics in January, officials informed a number of those laid off that "we've reviewed your Twitter pages."

A clause buried in a tax amnesty bill introduced by the administration in May would have punished journalists reporting on those benefiting from said amnesty with up to two years in prison and a fine equal to whatever amount was repatriated. The Argentine Journalists' Forum (FOPEA) denounced the clause as unconstitutional, and Macri withdrew it in June.

The production offices of Tiempo Argentino, a center-left Buenos Aires news daily, and its companion radio station, Radio América, were ransacked in July. Local police, controlled by a city government run by Macri's same party, refused to intervene or to allow employees to intervene as the destruction was taking place, and were later filmed escorting a number of vandals out without issuing arrests or removing their ski masks.

Three prominent Macri critics - including a journalist, Cynthia García - had their homes or offices broken into within days of each other in August. García had nothing stolen except two computers, external hard drives, tablet, spiral notebooks, and other research being used in a forthcoming investigative piece.

The country's most popular variety show host, Marcelo Tinelli, was also the target of a massive social media harassment campaign after satirizing Macri in July. The campaign was revealed to have been directed by a partisan "troll center," and that at most 2% of all derogatory posts were in fact linked to real individuals.

Jorge Halperín, one of the public radio hosts fired shortly after Macri took office, noted that spying on journalists was "a matter of course, as if part of Macri's DNA - but no less serious even so."

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