I agree with you. You would have to find some accurate definition for "What is a democracy?", e.g. look at the freedom of press, freedom of election (E.g. are there any inconsistencies in the last elections), conflicts in a country. Based on a lot of factors you could probably say "This is a democracy" or "This is somewhere between".

But still no good solution.

And criminal would be too far, as such spyware should only be used against extremely serious crimes, e.g. warcrimes or terrorism

The exact lines might be blurry, but that doesn't mean you can't try. Like there's plenty of countries that plainly aren't democracies