Five . Renewed for Season 2 already . But they shut down production after the 5 th Ep to map out the arc for 5 years . <| sep |> First off , no human is politically neutral unless ignorant . Secondly , he doesn ' t dislike thedonald because of Donald Trump , but rather because they constantly harass him and others . <| sep |> I believe you are correct . This is what I get for trying to use big words . <| sep |> The push to change the law came after it emerged last year that the GCSB illegally spied on Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom before armed police raided his Auckland mansion as part of a USled probe into online piracy . At the time Key publicly apologised to Dotcom , who is a New Zealand resident and should have been offlimits to the GCSB under legislation preventing it from snooping on locals . However , an official report found that Dotcom ' s case was only one of dozens in which the GCSB had overstepped its bounds . Key then moved to change the law to let the GCSB spy on New Zealanders , arguing it needed to cooperate more closely with agencies such as the police and military in an increasingly complex cybersecurity environment . zealandspyinglawn 3789041 . html Tech giants such as Google , Facebook and Microsoft have also voiced concern about expanding the GCSB ' s surveillance powers . Blanket rules requiring data retention and accessibility are blunt tools , which have the potential to infringe on civil liberties and constrain economic growth , Facebook said in a submission to a parliamentary committee reviewing the bill . New Zealand ' s Law Society , Human Rights Commission and Privacy Commission all made submissions raising concerns about the bill and calling for significant changes . An opinion poll published in the Dominion Post newspaper on Wednesday found 75 per cent of respondents were concerned about the changes . Mr Key dismissed such reservations , saying conspiracy theorists and his political opponents had whipped up an alarmist frenzy . I have rarely seen so much misinformation and conspiracy as has been perpetrated about this bill , he said . That has some citizens agitated and alarmed , which I regret . But my regret would be nothing compared to the threat if this legislation was not passed and New Zealanders were harmed because of a gap that currently exists in our security arrangements . 0821 newzealandpassesspybill 4903500 What a lying scumbag . I can predict several tactics one could use to try to debunk this claim . In anticipation , I suppose I ' ll have to quote this investigative piece indepth . AUCKLAND , New ZealandThe New Zealand spy agency , the Government Communications Security Bureau GCSB , worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system even as top government officials publicly insisted no such program was being planned and would not be legally permitted . Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection program that appeared designed to collect information about the communications of New Zealanders . Those actions are in direct conflict with the assurances given to the public by Prime Minister John Key pictured above , who said the law was merely designed to fix an ambiguous legal framework by expressly allowing the agency to do what it had done for years , that it isn ' t and will never be wholesale spying on New Zealanders , and the law isn ' t a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations . Snowden , in a post for The Intercept published today , accused Prime Minster Key of fundamentally misleading the public about GCSB ' s role in mass surveillance . The Prime Minister ' s claim to the public , that ' there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance ', is false , the former NSA analyst wrote . The GCSB , whose operations he is responsible for , is directly involved in the untargeted , bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet , satellite , radio , and phone networks . Snowden explained that at the NSA , I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB , called ' X KEYSCORE . He further detailed that the GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE . They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB facility in Waihopai , and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact . . Over the weekend , in anticipation of this report , Key admitted for the first time that the GCSB did plan a program of mass surveillance aimed at his own citizens , but claimed that he ultimately rejected the program before implementation . Yesterday , after The Intercept sought comment from the NSA , the Prime Minister told reporters in Auckland that this reporting was referring merely to a proposed widespread cyber protection programme that never got off the ground . He vowed to declassify documents confirming his decision . But the documents indicate that Speargun was not just an idea that stalled at the discussion stage . It was a system GCSB actively worked to implement . One top secret 2012 NSA document states Project Speargun underway . Another top secret NSA document discussing the activities of its surveillance partners reports , under the heading New Zealand , that Partner cable access program achieves Phase I . Critically , the NSA documents note in more than one place that completion of Speargun was impeded by one obstacle The need to enact a new spying law that would allow the GCSB , for the first time , to spy on its own citizens as well as legal residents of the country . As one NSA planning document put it , completion of Speargun was awaiting new GCSB Act expected July 2013 . Note see hereuploadssites 1201409 NSADoc 1 . pdf That legislation arose after it was revealed in 2012 that the GCSB illegally surveilled the communications of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom , a legal resident of New Zealand . New Zealand law at the time forbade the GCSB from using its surveillance apparatus against citizens or legal residents . That illegal GCSB surveillance of Dotcom was followed by a massive militarystyle police raid by New Zealand authorities on his home in connection with Dotcom ' s criminal prosecution in the United States for copyright violations . A subsequent government investigation found that the GCSB not only illegally spied on Dotcom but also dozens of other citizens and legal residents . The deputy director of GCSB resigned . The government ' s response to these revelations was to refuse to prosecute those who ordered the illegal spying and , instead , to propose a new law that would allow domestic electronic surveillance . That proposal was intensely controversial , prompting large public protests and a concerted campaign against the law . One news broadcaster called it one of the most polarizing pieces of legislation in recent times . It was of sufficient interest to the NSA that in March 2013 , the director of Prime Minister Key ' s Intelligence Coordination Group traveled to NSA headquarters to offer an update on the legislation . To assuage the public , Key and other top officials repeatedly insisted that the real purpose of the law was merely to provide oversight and to clarify that targeted domestic surveillance which had long been carried out by the agency was legal . Key categorically denied that the law would allow mass metadata collection on the New Zealand public There have been claims this Bill offers no protection of metadata and allows for wholesale collection of metadata without a warrant . None of that is true . Key told the public that the new law would not permit mass , warrantless metadata surveillance So when the GCSB wants to access metadata , it is treated with the same level of seriousness and protection as if the GCSB was accessing the actual content of a communication . And there are protections around that . In response to Key ' s claims , legal experts extensively documented that the new law would indeed provide a major increase in the overall role and powers of the GCSB and would allow the very broad ' wholesale ' powers which Key denied . Yet the Key government , and the prime minister himself , steadfastly insisted that the law permits no mass surveillance . At one point , Key even promised to resign if it were found that the GCSB were engaging in mass surveillance . Based on Key ' s assurances , the New Zealand Parliament narrowly voted to enact the new law on August 21 of last year , by a vote of 6159 . Immediately prior to passage , Key acknowledged that the new law has ' alarmed ' some people but blame the Government ' s opponents for stoking their fears and again rejected that by writing into law what the GCSB had already been doing meant an extension of its powers . But in highlevel discussions between the Key government and the NSA , the new law was clearly viewed as the crucial means to empower the GCSB to engage in metadata surveillance . On more than one occasion , the NSA noted internally that Project Speargun , in the process of being implemented , could not and would not be completed until the new law was enacted . The NSA apparently viewed that new law as providing exactly the powers that Key repeatedly and publicly denied it would vest . z e a l a n d g c s b s p e a r g unmasssurveillanceSomeone who wishes to apologize for this historical Five Eyes surveillance partner would now be left with only one remaining tactic try to discredit First Look , The Intercept or Edward Snowden with ad hominem or possibly even try to mimic John Key ' s hollow rhetoric on the matter . These tactics aren ' t unique to New Zealand the Netherlands , too was pressured by the Americans to push through more and more legislation serving the interests of the terrorsurveillance complex .