Barry agrees with Alexander’s call for laws on social media posts

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says he shares some of the con­cerns raised by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der re­gard­ing the pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of sen­si­tive ma­te­r­i­al on so­cial me­dia, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the re­cent po­lice-in­volved killing of Joshua Sama­roo and the in­jury of his wife, Ka­ia Sealy, in St Au­gus­tine.

Alexan­der’s com­ments fol­lowed wide­spread pub­lic out­rage af­ter CCTV footage of the in­ci­dent cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly on so­cial me­dia. The video, which ap­peared to show Sama­roo with his hands raised in the air out­side his crashed car as po­lice of­fi­cers fired at him, prompt­ed in­tense pub­lic de­bate and re­newed scruti­ny of po­lice con­duct.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters on Wednes­day, Alexan­der em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the rule of law, cau­tion­ing against how such ma­te­r­i­al is shared pub­licly. He al­so ac­knowl­edged that ev­i­dence was crit­i­cal to pub­lic un­der­stand­ing and con­ced­ed that the po­lice could have re­leased rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion soon­er. How­ev­er, he al­so said, “Look­ing at it from this an­gle, some­thing needs to be done with those who do that, in terms of the law. You can­not put things out there, get pub­lic opin­ion on on­ly what they saw for two min­utes or a minute and a half, and then draw a con­clu­sion. The time has come for that to change, and there must be law to ad­dress it. That might be the next an­gle we’re look­ing at.”

Alexan­der was crit­i­cised by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith for what was seen as a move to cur­tail free­dom of speech.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Padarath said the sit­u­a­tion high­light­ed long-stand­ing leg­isla­tive gaps, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of cy­ber­crime.

“You’d re­call that un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, there was a cy­ber­crime bill be­fore Par­lia­ment that last­ed and lan­guished for a num­ber of years and was left to col­lapse. The for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion did not pur­sue the cy­ber­crime bill in the con­text and the en­vi­ron­ment in which we live in to­day, in a tech­no­log­i­cal world,” Padarath said.

Un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty leg­is­la­tion was ad­vanced through the Cy­ber­crime Bill (2017) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Agency Bill, both of which were de­signed to mod­ernise the na­tion’s dig­i­tal de­fences and pun­ish high-tech crimes.

The Cy­ber­crime Bill pro­posed stiff penal­ties for of­fences such as iden­ti­ty theft, hack­ing, and com­put­er-re­lat­ed fraud, while al­so in­tro­duc­ing con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sions against “cy­ber-bul­ly­ing” and the unau­tho­rised ac­qui­si­tion of da­ta, claus­es that sparked sig­nif­i­cant de­bate re­gard­ing free­dom of the press and whis­tle-blow­er pro­tec­tion. It, how­ev­er, lapsed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2020.

Padarath yes­ter­day stressed that up­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion is in­creas­ing­ly nec­es­sary, not on­ly in re­la­tion to the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy but al­so to ad­dress broad­er so­ci­etal chal­lenges linked to so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal plat­forms.

“I think that leg­is­la­tion is need­ed not on­ly on this par­tic­u­lar is­sue that Min­is­ter Alexan­der has raised,” he said, adding that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so spo­ken about the need to pro­tect chil­dren from harm­ful ex­po­sure on­line.

“There will be a holis­tic ap­proach for us to look at all leg­is­la­tion in­volv­ing cy­ber­crime.”

While not­ing that Alexan­der’s com­ments should not be tak­en in iso­la­tion, Padarath said they must be un­der­stood with­in the wider con­text of mod­ern gov­er­nance and pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“I do share some of the con­cerns ex­pressed by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, but it can­not be tak­en in iso­la­tion. For a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety, you do need leg­is­la­tion, and that would just be one area of it,” Padarath said.