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warrant, he neglected to include a description of what would happen to the material seized; the application had come late — just two days prior to the raid — and was proffered to a judge who had no time to consider it, being signed off and approved on 19 January 2012, the day before the raid; there was no precise detail as to which crimes were being investigated through use of the search warrant, and nothing clear to show the FBI were behind it. It was also awkward in its labelling of who had carried out the criminal offending — the term “Mega conspiracy” used by the FBI had been parroted by the New Zealand police and was, in effect, a meaningless phrase.

Concern was also expressed about the amount of information captured in the search. The problem, it emerged in court, was that the FBI had asked the police to seize evidence, but not told them what the evidence was. So, to be on the safe side, they had taken almost everything.

The problem, the Chief Judge said, was that the property seized needed to be sorted for relevance and returned if it had no place in the FBI investigation. Police had intended the sorting exercise be done by the FBI offshore.

Not good enough, Winkelmann ruled. The Police should have had equipment available to clone the devices seized and either copies or clones returned. Having received the clones, the FBI should have been able to sort the seized data quickly, weeding out that which was irrelevant.

Instead, a large amount of information not covered by the search warrant had been taken. The Bill of Rights Act protected against unreasonable search and seizure. “The warrants could not authorise seizure of irrelevant material, and are therefore invalid,” Winkelmann ruled. What was more, the Police continued to hold the seized material and had yet to sort it. “The Police faced operational difficulties in executing these search warrants in a lawful manner because they are not the investigating officers with knowledge of the operation.” Not good enough, she said. They should have had FBI officers along on the raid to allow the sorting to be done as soon as possible.

An understanding of the way in which police had gone about assisting the FBI was beginning to emerge. It was beginning to look like there was no end to the bumbles. They needed another hearing, they told chief judge Winkelmann.

What followed was a farce revealing how far otherwise sensible public servants appeared to have forsaken good practice to help the FBI. William Akel, Paul Davison and Guyon Foley found spies and dragged them out into the light.

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