Gail Alexan­der

A Face­book video in­volv­ing death threats against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been sent to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for ac­tion, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's dai­ly me­dia brief­ing by se­cu­ri­ty chiefs at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Ram­lo­gan said he had seen the video and it was a mat­ter of grave con­cern. Ram­lo­gan said the video was im­me­di­ate­ly turned over to CoP Dwayne Gibbs. Ram­lo­gan said he had not­ed a num­ber of Face­book videos and post­ings which bor­der on in­cite­ment, had ob­scene lan­guage and in some cas­es were abu­sive to se­cu­ri­ty forces. Ram­lo­gan not­ed one video with a fe­male of about 14 or 15 years old, whom he said made pro­fane com­ments. He said such types of videos would not be tol­er­at­ed.

While free­dom of ex­pres­sion was per­mit­ted in a state of emer­gency, Ram­lo­gan said in­cit­ing and use of vul­gar, abu­sive and ob­scene lan­guage was not per­mit­ted. Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment had agen­cies ex­am­in­ing the var­i­ous so­cial me­dia sites to see if what is be­ing put up was with­in the law. If it is not, it will be passed to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for ac­tion, he added. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said if the law had been bro­ken where the Face­book video of the fe­male was con­cerned, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er would "take ap­pro­pri­ate steps." On the oth­er side of the coin, the so­cial me­dia may be used to as­sist cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions.

Ad­mit­ting that a sore point in the se­cu­ri­ty ex­er­cise was the gath­er­ing of com­mu­ni­ty-based in­tel­li­gence, Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment was think­ing of us­ing Face­book to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion via vir­tu­al com­mand cen­tre. He warned that peo­ple sub­mit­ting false in­for­ma­tion could be charged with wast­ing po­lice time and false leads on such a fo­rum could be traced via the IP ad­dress. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said emer­gency ve­hi­cles like am­bu­lances were avail­able to trans­port the ill to hos­pi­tals or nurs­ing homes. If peo­ple were go­ing on their own to such places, he ad­vised that the po­lice sta­tion be no­ti­fied.