On Monday, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan declared himself disappointed at the non-starter status of the e-mailgate probe."This is shocking and scandalous," the AG declared, "as our reputations are at stake and we were promised a swift and efficient investigation."It won't be the first investigation described in such hopeful terms to go seriously awry, but this was a probe that had never shed concerns about the ability of the police to act on a 21st-century collection of possible evidence.
It can't have gone unnoticed within the police service that such reservations existed, and given the very public announcement of the allegations, it was misguided to imagine the probe could or should take place under the usual police veil of secrecy and PR misdirection.
At the very least, the investigating police officers might have earned a few points and some respect if they had been able to update the public on the request and specific questions that had been put to Google about the e-mail transcripts read into the public record by Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley.
Google, despite its efforts to keep user data safe from legal intrusions, complies with official requests for such information. According to the company's records (http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/), there is no record of a request for user data from T&T between December 2009 and June 2013.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members