PM defends phone taps

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed pub­lic con­cerns that State se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are mon­i­tor­ing cit­i­zens’ pri­vate phone con­ver­sa­tions, say­ing the on­ly peo­ple wor­ried about sur­veil­lance are crim­i­nals and those “suf­fer­ing from de­range­ment and para­noia.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about grow­ing pub­lic un­ease over al­leged State in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “All law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are very sup­port­ive of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices’ ef­forts to com­bat crime,” she said.

“The on­ly per­sons who are wor­ried are those who are in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and those suf­fer­ing from de­range­ment and para­noia.

“In fact, I have not met a sin­gle stink­ing c****e who is con­cerned about us­ing their phone. The State se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies treat every­one equal­ly. An in­frac­tion of the law by the fake elite Es­co­bar and Ep­stein class­es will be treat­ed no dif­fer­ent to an in­frac­tion of the law by a c****e from Siparia.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia amid height­ened pub­lic de­bate over pri­va­cy and State sur­veil­lance, fol­low­ing a se­ries of high-pro­file Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), a leaked au­dio record­ing from the State’s case against the Hadeeds and re­peat­ed Gov­ern­ment as­sur­ances that in­ter­cep­tion pow­ers are be­ing law­ful­ly ex­er­cised.

The is­sue has in­ten­si­fied in re­cent weeks, af­ter the cir­cu­la­tion of an au­dio record­ing pur­port­ing to cap­ture a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween busi­ness­woman Star Sab­ga and rel­a­tive Genevieve Hadeed, the wife of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has since or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the leaked au­dio to de­ter­mine how it en­tered the pub­lic do­main and whether any laws were bro­ken in its record­ing or dis­sem­i­na­tion.

Mean­while, ear­li­er this week, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that the leaked record­ing should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be tak­en as ev­i­dence that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties un­law­ful­ly in­ter­cept­ed the con­ver­sa­tion. He cau­tioned that, with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tions can al­so be in­ter­cept­ed by ex­ter­nal ac­tors and urged the pub­lic not to jump to con­clu­sions about the source of the record­ing. Je­re­mie al­so stressed that “all mem­bers of an eth­nic group can nev­er be the sub­ject of a law­ful in­ter­cept. It can nev­er be prop­er,” while main­tain­ing that, “no phone in T&T is tapped with­out strict­ly fol­low­ing the pro­vi­sions of the law.” He did not, how­ev­er, di­rect­ly an­swer Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions about the le­gal ba­sis for the al­leged in­ter­cep­tion in the Sab­ga mat­ter, in­clud­ing which court au­tho­rised any in­ter­cep­tion war­rant or who ap­plied for it.

Ear­li­er this month, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der de­fend­ed the State’s in­ter­cep­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties, in­sist­ing that such pow­ers ex­ist in democ­ra­cies world­wide and are ex­er­cised on­ly with­in the con­fines of the law and un­der ju­di­cial over­sight. He main­tained that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear from law­ful sur­veil­lance con­duct­ed as part of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­peat­ed use of the eth­nic slur “c****e” in re­cent pub­lic state­ments al­so comes in the con­text of the leaked record­ing. In that au­dio, Sab­ga is al­leged to have re­peat­ed­ly used the same deroga­to­ry term while re­fer­ring to In­do-Trinida­di­ans. The record­ing sparked wide­spread pub­lic de­bate over race re­la­tions and in­flam­ma­to­ry po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, with the Prime Min­is­ter re­peat­ed­ly ref­er­enc­ing the word in sub­se­quent speech­es as she con­demned what she de­scribed as racist at­tacks.

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day con­demned the Prime Min­is­ter’s lat­est com­ments, ac­cus­ing her of dis­miss­ing le­git­i­mate pub­lic con­cerns over pri­va­cy while fur­ther in­flam­ing racial ten­sions.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­duct was “dis­grace­ful, un­couth, and un­be­com­ing of the of­fice that she oc­cu­pies.”

“She will not ad­mit or ac­knowl­edge the re­al fears that have gripped the so­ci­ety on the is­sue of State mon­i­tor­ing of con­fi­den­tial phone con­ver­sa­tion of cit­i­zens,” Gon­za­les said.

“The pri­va­cy of our cit­i­zens have been de­stroyed as the po­lit­i­cal witch hunt of the UNC has reached de­struc­tive and alarm­ing lev­els by the weapon­i­sa­tion of the State’s re­sources.”

He ar­gued that the Prime Min­is­ter had failed to re­as­sure cit­i­zens who re­main con­cerned about whether their com­mu­ni­ca­tions are be­ing mon­i­tored.

Gon­za­les al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­peat­ed use of racial­ly charged lan­guage, say­ing it was in­con­sis­tent with the stan­dards ex­pect­ed of a na­tion­al leader.

“Her con­stant us­age and re­sort to racial and nasty slurs and de­scrip­tions is dis­gust­ing, shame­ful and sick,” he said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has now turned her of­fice in­to a sym­bol of ha­tred and di­vi­sive­ness, but the re­silience of our beau­ti­ful peo­ple will sur­vive her di­a­tribe and pu­trid at­tacks against our na­tion­al uni­ty.”

Gon­za­les lament­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to clar­i­fy the air on a crit­i­cal na­tion­al is­sue and as­suage the le­git­i­mate con­cerns of cit­i­zens but chose to re­spond by launch­ing vi­cious at­tacks and her “usu­al” di­vi­sive rhetoric.

Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have con­sis­tent­ly de­fend­ed the ex­pand­ed use of se­cu­ri­ty pow­ers dur­ing the State of Emer­gency, ar­gu­ing that ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures are nec­es­sary to dis­man­tle or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works. Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, how­ev­er, have ques­tioned whether those pow­ers are be­ing ex­er­cised pro­por­tion­ate­ly and have re­peat­ed­ly called for greater trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the State’s in­ter­cep­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties and the le­gal ba­sis for re­cent pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders.