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he would see Dotcom in January was “almost the info we are after”. It would be “nice to know where/when that meeting is”. It “confirms they are at least to meet as no doubt will the others”. A GCSB staff member wrote back to say the spies were signing off for Christmas, would check early January to ensure “nothing sensational is going on” and planned to be back on 9 January. The next report came early in the New Year with the redacted details reading:

5 January 2012
This report contains a New Years greeting between two associates of Kim Dotcom not named in the affidavit. One associate was probably Australian.

The Christmas holiday break, and the time until the raid, had only let two reports filter through, according to court details. Then, on 11 January 2012, police received Dotcom’s full immigration file, showing clearly he and Mona were residents. They also had van der Kolk’s details at this stage, so knew he was also a newly made resident, as of 2 December 2011. The information should have served as a clear alert the law was being broken — yet the spying continued.

The reports which followed detailed flight plans for friends of the accused, both for visiting New Zealand for Dotcom’s party or travelling to the US for a conference. The information intercepted seemed to be lifted not only from data streams belonging to Dotcom, Ortmann and van der Kolk — but also from others who emerged in the three men’s data streams.

Some interceptions appeared to have no direct connection with the targets. The day before the raid one intercept read: “Two partially identified individuals noted that Batato had arrived.” The details suggested the “selectors of interest” were unique identifying details, like phone numbers and email addresses, which were used to carry out a vast sweep through the internet, sweeping up everything which connected to the known details.

“Hope Dotcom goes down,” wrote a GCSB analyst on 18 January 2012, wishing police well. The Ofcanz analyst responded: “The support (Task Force) Debut has received from the GCSB is unprecedented and really positive. Our management here is very happy.”

Then came the raid — and the back-patting. Even as the police and spies were celebrating, they were compounding their error. The GCSB would later admit they had continued spying on Dotcom beyond the raid. In fact, after seven months of apologising for spying up to the raid, the spies had to admit the spying didn’t actually stop until 10 days later, on 30 January 2012. The admission came with the explanation that the

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