Legally, spying in Austria is only illegal when Austria itself is concerned. (Technically, there is no damage done to the public good in espionage against a thi

Legally, spying in Austria is only illegal when Austria itself is concerned. (Technically, there is no damage done to the public good in espionage against a third party. As Austria is technically/officially without allies, there are also no intermediate interests to defend, justifying a universal law against this. However, there may be reason to update this with regard to EU membership. Mind that this is also a legacy of when Austria had been a much-needed link between the East and the West, in the Cold War, and even before this. But as it is now, the need for or the worth of such a role is perceived increasingly less.) Regarding "allied", it's complicated: EU membership is sort of an association, Austria is member of P4P, and there were certain grey projects in the past, which involved cooperation (and also circumvented parliamentary oversight), Austria is very probably participating in Skyshield, but technically Austria is not part of any block. However, for Austria, there had never been any doubt that it was aligned to Western values and strategies. It's actually a two-fold problem, e.g., the military intelligence service refuses to report on any cooperations with the NSA to parliament, which is expected to have oversight.