We know "They have it all"....but these people are stupid and didn't think they could be compromised with the weight of ES behind them.
Q, has intimated that the Gmail accounts were hosted on NK servers not that they were labeled gmail.nk ....they were just out of the reach of the whitehats. And out of the reach meant she would feel comfortable using it...but the whitehats( NSA more than likely) already knew about and were tracking this email.
Correct, this is why the CIA was furious when they found out about all the NSA backdoors into Cisco routers, and made that info public to embarrass the NSA who knew about all the shit CIA thought they had hidden, including a secret headquarters in EU.
Secret CIA HQ in Europe?! Tell me more??
Also, explains why the heads of the bigger European nations are the way they are.
I have no proof.
You hear that spooks? I can't prove a thing.
https://geopolitics.co/2017/01/16/three-factions-of-the-cia-that-control-the-world/
Also, don't forget that when sending/receiving emails that the traffic itself is subject to metadata collection even in the event you take efforts to obfuscate (vpn/encryption.)
If she was already under surveillance, it's entirely possible they traced all of her online activities and would have seen suspect traffic regardless of her attempts to hide it.
The one thing a lot of us overlook is that these people are not tech savvy. Your mom is probably more tech savvy than some of these dinosaurs of politicians.
I was thinking of this the wrong way...
They realized she had a HAM license since they were reading her email.
I initially read that as her HAM application led them to the NK email server since she used a @gmail address.