Er, it doesn't matter though :) Federal "spook" agencies do the same thing and are equally above the law. You can't know really if your past business partners j

Er, it doesn't matter though :) Federal "spook" agencies do the same thing and are equally above the law. You can't know really if your past business partners joined you for a fun evening just because or if their multi-letter work places got all the forms in order for them to do "whatever it takes" to catch you doing something illegal. If your active threat scope involves governments, don't expect them to behave with regards to the laws where you are; either they don't care and will just deal with the fallout, or they have explicit approval do to illegal or wrong things. I don't have an answer on how to check for spooks, I guess you'd have to do reverse reconnaissance, but I have no idea how feasible it is. But testing legal and social norms is not reliable; governments are not really bound by their own rules, especially when it comes to branches dealing with security or intelligence.