By: Felix Marwick | Tuesday, October 09, 2012 6:00 AM

The capacity of the Dotcom story to surprise never fails to amaze me. Every time I think the saga's got about as weird as it can, it heads off on a new and completely unexpected direction.

The raid on his mansion was one hell of an opening act. Almost like a scene out of one of the Hollywood movies that Dotcom's critics allege he and his Megaupload website allowed to be copied and distributed in breach of copyright.

The came the John Banks donations saga. A government minister suddenly afflicted with the worst case of amnesia you'd ever see, except without the benefit of a head injury to explain it.

The dust had barely settled on that when, whoops, it turned out Dotcom and one of his associates had been unlawfully spied on. If that wasn't bizarre enough, a review of that botch up revealed another three potential cases when similar illegal activity might have occurred.

It's a comedy Shakespeare himself would have been proud to have written.

But the problem is it's not a play, it's reality (albeit an overwhelmingly weird one). This debacle, this morass of incompetence, amateurism and ineptitude has all actually happened.

At one level it's laughable, but at another it's incredibly serious.

Our spy agencies have wide-ranging and extraordinary powers, and they operate largely out of the public eye and public scrutiny.

Though some might argue otherwise intelligence agencies do perform a valuable and necessary function. We need to know what the other guy is up to, operating on the basis of blind faith and ignorance is not a viable, nor sensible option.

However these powers come with significant obligations.

The GCSB and the SIS have a legal and moral obligation not to break the rules that govern them. Those that are responsible for them have a duty to make sure they toe the line. For the agencies and their political masters, in this case the Prime Minister, to fail in this regard is inexcusable.

To fail once is bad enough, but to fail repeatedly is even worse. And unfortunately the past decade and a half has seen a litany of botch ups, snaffoos, and blind stupidity.

The SIS's breaking and entering into the house of activist Aziz Choudry, the legal tussles over the risk certificate for Ahmed Zaoui, and now this.

We should be able to trust our intelligence agencies to do their jobs properly. They're breaching that trust and that's not acceptable, particularly for organisations that have limited obligations in the way of public accountability.

Photo: NZ Herald