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WELLINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) - New Zealand has been spying electronically on its Pacific Island neighbors and Indonesia and sharing the intelligence with its international allies, according to documents released on Thursday.
The documents, released by former U.S. National Security Authority contractor Edward Snowden and dating back to 2009, said New Zealand's electronic spy agency had intercepted emails, mobile and fixed line phone calls, social media messages and other communications in small Pacific states including Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and French Polynesia.
The material gathered by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was shared with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which along with agencies in Australia, Britain, and Canada, make up the "Five Eyes" surveillance network.
"They've gone from some selected targeting of the South Pacific states and other targets to a new stage of where they just hoover up everything," investigative writer Nicky Hager said on Radio New Zealand.
"They take every single phone call, every single email, and they go straight off into databases, which are U.S. National Security Agency databases."
Hager, who is collaborating with the New Zealand Herald newspaper and Intercept website in revealing the documents, said there would be further disclosures.
The documents also said a New Zealand GCSB officer had worked with the Australian Signals Directorate in spying on Indonesian cellphone company Telkomsel.
Prime Minister John Key refused to comment on the disclosures, but had said on Wednesday when asked about their expected release that they were bound to be wrong. The GCSB also refused comment.
The role of the agency, which has a large eavesdropping facility at the top of the country's South Island, was an issue in last year's general election, with documents released by Snowden suggesting the GCSB was planning to conduct mass domestic surveillance.
The GCSB is banned from spying on New Zealand citizens, unless authorized to support other agencies, but has no legal restrictions on foreign activities.
The South Pacific region has seen military coups in Fiji, inter-communal armed strife in the Solomon Islands, while France maintains military bases in Tahiti and New Caledonia.
China has also been increasing its influence and development aid to small island states.
(Reporting by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Michael Perry)

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia has offered Indonesia a prison swap deal in an 11th hour bid to save the lives of two Australian drug smugglers who have been transferred to an island prison where they are to be killed by firing squad within days.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Thursday she made the proposal to her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi who had agreed to convey it to President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. Bishop said she had yet to hear back. The Australian newspaper reported Bishop had offered to repatriate three convicted Indonesian drug criminals in return for the lives of the Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The Australians are among nine foreigners who are to be executed soon.

In the Dutch countryside, a tall, older man, dressed in a maroon sports coat, his back slightly stooped, stands out because of his height and a pair of extraordinarily bushy eyebrows. His words, inflected by a British accent, are directed at a middle-aged man with long, curly brown hair, penetrating eyes and a dark, scholarly gown, who talks in only a halting English that reveals his native French origins. Their strangely clashing styles of speaking and mismatched clothes do not seem to matter to them as they press forward, with Eyebrows peering down intently at the Scholar. There is something distinctly odd about the entire meeting—a crossing of time, place and disciplines.