CoP orders probe into audio leak

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has or­dered a probe in­to the leaked tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Genevieve Hadeed and Star Sab­ga, which be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia over the week­end.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the TTPS said Gue­var­ro had di­rect­ed As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Andy Tee­warie to lead the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which will de­ter­mine whether the record­ing is au­then­tic, whether it con­sti­tutes com­mu­ni­ca­tions law­ful­ly in­ter­cept­ed and, if au­then­tic, how it came to be pub­licly cir­cu­lat­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors will al­so ex­am­ine whether any­one un­law­ful­ly dis­closed pro­tect­ed in­for­ma­tion or breached op­er­a­tional se­cu­ri­ty, da­ta-han­dling pro­to­cols or statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions.

It point­ed out that com­mu­ni­ca­tions may on­ly be law­ful­ly in­ter­cept­ed un­der the pro­vi­sions of the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act and re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the unau­tho­rised dis­clo­sure of in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions is an of­fence.

The TTPS said the mat­ter is be­ing treat­ed with the high­est lev­el of ur­gency and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and that no fur­ther com­ment will be made while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­mains ac­tive.

Mean­while, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said the leaked tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion may not nec­es­sar­i­ly have orig­i­nat­ed from a law­ful in­ter­cep­tion car­ried out by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, warn­ing that ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy have made it pos­si­ble for ex­ter­nal ac­tors to in­ter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the is­sue, Je­re­mie urged cau­tion against draw­ing con­clu­sions about the source of the leaked record­ing.

“Please re­mem­ber that giv­en mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, it is pos­si­ble for ex­ter­nal ac­tors to al­so con­duct in­ter­cep­tions,” Je­re­mie said.

The leaked au­dio record­ing has gen­er­at­ed wide­spread pub­lic de­bate af­ter be­ing shared across so­cial me­dia.

In the record­ing, a woman al­leged to be Sab­ga is heard mak­ing a se­ries of crit­i­cal re­marks about Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, call­ing for her re­moval from of­fice and al­leg­ing that in­no­cent peo­ple were be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, a woman al­leged to be Hadeed refers to com­ments she at­trib­uted to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­gard­ing Unit­ed States law en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties, be­fore Sab­ga re­jects the claim and goes on to make al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

The record­ing sur­faced short­ly af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der filed an af­fi­davit in the High Court de­fend­ing his de­ci­sion to place Sab­ga in pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The af­fi­davit re­ferred to in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­volv­ing Sab­ga.

Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Je­re­mie on sev­er­al is­sues aris­ing from the af­fi­davit, in­clud­ing the le­gal ba­sis on which Sab­ga’s phone was al­leged­ly in­ter­cept­ed, whether the af­fi­davit sug­gest­ed that all mem­bers of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty were un­der sur­veil­lance, which court is­sued in­ter­cep­tion war­rants and who ap­plied for those war­rants and when.

While the AG did not ad­dress those spe­cif­ic ques­tions, he said, “All mem­bers of an eth­nic group can nev­er be the sub­ject of a law­ful in­ter­cept. It can nev­er be prop­er.”

Je­re­mie al­so de­fend­ed the le­gal safe­guards gov­ern­ing the in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in T&T.

“No phone in T&T is tapped with­out strict­ly fol­low­ing the pro­vi­sions of the law.”

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day wel­comed the TTPS de­ci­sion to in­ves­ti­gate the leak but said the probe must be com­pre­hen­sive and in­de­pen­dent.

In a Face­book post, Gon­za­les said, “I wish to com­mend the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for fi­nal­ly break­ing his si­lence on the re­cent il­le­gal re­lease of in­ter­cept­ed au­dio com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les cau­tioned that in­ves­ti­ga­tors should not al­low po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence to in­ter­fere with their work.

“I al­so wish to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pub­licly ad­vise the Com­mis­sion­er again, that he must take ex­tra care­ful pre­cau­tion so as not to al­low his of­fice to be ma­nip­u­lat­ed and used by dan­ger­ous and de­ceit­ful politi­cians.”

He fur­ther ar­gued that in­ves­ti­ga­tors should be pre­pared to ex­am­ine the ac­tions of se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials.

“These in­ves­ti­ga­tors must be pre­pared to go in­to all high of­fice hold­ers to iden­ti­fy the source of the breach.”

Gon­za­les al­so main­tained that the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion does not an­swer broad­er po­lit­i­cal ques­tions sur­round­ing the con­tro­ver­sy.

“This an­nounce­ment does not ab­solve the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al from break­ing their si­lence on this scan­dal.”