New Zealand's intelligence-gathering operations are "100 per cent legal" and there are valid reasons for what they do, Prime Minister John Key says.
He was responding to revelations, published on Thursday, that New Zealand is spying on some of its closest Pacific neighbours and passing information to the United States.
"Some of the information is incorrect, some of it is out of date, and some of the assumptions are just plain wrong," he told reporters.
"We do have the GCSB and it is a foreign intelligence service, it does gather foreign intelligence that's in the best interests of New Zealand and the protection of New Zealanders."
Mr Key says successive governments have used the GCSB to gather foreign intelligence.
"Where we gather intelligence, particularly if a friend is involved, it isn't to harm that country," he said.
"It's often to support or assist them."
He says New Zealand's "Pacific friends" are welcome to raise the issue.
Labour leader Andrew Little says the revelations could damage New Zealand's relationships in the region, but so far there's no evidence of that.
Samoa's Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi says he isn't worried and suspects it's media sensationalism.
"I suppose it's a disappointment to have to tell them that I don't have any strong feelings about the allegations of spying," he said.
Documents obtained by the fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden show the Government Communications Security Bureau intercepts email, phone and social media communications from countries like Fiji, Solomon Islands and Samoa, then sends the information on to the US National Security Agency, the New Zealand Herald reports.
Mr Little says people expect the security agencies to target information and issues that are a threat to New Zealand, not collect wholesale information.
"If our allies in the South Pacific haven't known we've been doing this, it makes those relationships very uncomfortable and there's going to have to be a lot of explaining."
Mr Little says he was surprised by the extent of the surveillance.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager, who's been involved in the release of the Snowden documents, says the scale of New Zealand's surveillance in the Pacific has changed since 2009.
"They've gone from some selected targeting of the South Pacific states and other targets, to a new stage where they just hoover up everything," he told Radio New Zealand.
"They take every single phone call, every email and they go straight off into databases, which are US NSA databases."
The GCSB isn't allowed to collect information about New Zealanders, but Green Party co-leader Russel Norman fears New Zealand citizens have been caught up in the spying.
Mr Key denies that.
"New Zealanders' information isn't gathered except in circumstances which the law allows," he said.
Snowden's documents, which are held by Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept website, have been released to Hager in collaboration with three major New Zealand newspapers.
Share
