I don't know about TA for certain, but it is simple to view any planet of any race with a spy.

Simply go to place the spy on the planet.  That act will reveal the planet.  Then, if you placed the spy, simply remove it again before the end of the turn.

As in your reply to me, the boxes exist for the minor race, so I guess it should be able to be done globally, but I have never done so.

In the case of the minor race espionage Q that I had, I would like to steal techs w/o war.

I'm reasonably certain it's impossible; however I hardly ever make use of planetary spies to begin with as mine always seem to be nullified within a few turns. I also don't bother spying on minor races unless I have multiple spies to spare.

Also, the question does not apply to DL, as the abstracted version of espionage makes it impossible to spy on a minor race at all.

I play just DA, though I started briefly with DL.  I did not buy TA after I heard that the AIs had to be tinkered with by the player to make them expand.

Perhaps, then the coding was left the DL way in DA and TA.  That is, that espionage would not let one theft a tech from minor races.

In one game, I got to the almost the very end, and then gifted everything but one fleet and one planet to a minor race just to see what would happen.  They did not build spies even then, so I think mior races cannot do that.