Re: Is there a definition?
"What are "the bounds of acceptable behavior" in spying and espionage?"
Funnily enough, there sort of is an 'acceptable' level of spying - for example, that Russian spy ring from a few years back. They were engaged in an acceptable level of spying, in that they had little access to any privileged information and mostly reported back dull cultural crap of next to no political use. This is why, when they were kicked out of the US, that was pretty much as far as the matter went. During the Cold War, both sides kept fairly long lists of known enemy agents who could be kicked out for diplomatic purposes - they even selected a certain number depending on how 'offended' they were by whatever was provoking the kicking-out.
It would be incredibly rude not to do any spying on another country; that would basically be tantamount to saying 'you're not relevant enough for us to bother checking up on you'.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
