It is a direct challenge to the Prime Minister's assertion the Government Communications Security Bureau acts legally.
The Green Party complaint was lodged after documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden showed there was "full take" collection of satellite communications in the Pacific by the GCSB.
Once intercepted, it was claimed the information was sent to the United States' National Security Agency where intelligence agencies from friendly countries could search it by name, keyword or other identifying details.
The documents were detailed in a collaborative reporting project between the Herald, investigative journalist Nicky Hager and Intercept, a news site with access to the Snowden trove.
The timeframe at issue is from 2009 -- when the documents record "full take collection" was about to begin -- through to mid-2012, when Snowden quit his job with information he had taken.
At the time, the law stated the GCSB was not allowed to do anything which led to communications of a New Zealand citizen or resident being intercepted.
Accidental interception of New Zealanders' communications was meant to be destroyed as soon as possible.
The complaint from Greens co-leader Russel Norman to Inspector General Cheryl Gwyn -- who would not comment yesterday -- alleged "mass surveillances" of Kiwis throughout the Pacific region.
John Key yesterday rejected the Herald story. "Some of the information was incorrect, some of the information was out of date, some of the assumptions made were just plain wrong."
He added: "Everyone is 100 per cent confident our legal position is correct."
He would not speak in any further detail, but told a reporter at a press conference who asked about "full take": "With the greatest of respect,
I don't actually think you understand the technical term and it's not my job to explain it to you.
"Where we gather intelligence, particularly if there is a friend involved, then that isn't to harm that particular organisation or country. That is to support them, or assist them."
Tech Liberty's Thomas Beagle -- a lawyer -- said spy agencies exposed in the Snowden files tried to claim legality by interpreting the law in a particular way.
He said, in the New Zealand example, the argument could be made that "interception" of communications did not take place at the point Waihopai's satellites took a broad swathe of signals from the sky.
Instead, the "interception" was considered to have occurred when analysts used search terms to find specific information from the morass of data.
Mr Beagle said he did not agree with the interpretation.
By David Fisher of The New Zealand Herald
