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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Ex-Central Authority director on e-mail probe: Cops using faulty approach to Google

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An ap­pli­ca­tion to get any use­ful in­for­ma­tion from US-based in­ter­net search gi­ant Google can on­ly be suc­cess­ful if the re­quest is made through a sub­poe­na from a US court, ac­cord­ing to David West, the for­mer di­rec­tor of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty.

West, who head­ed the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty for eight years, in an in­ter­view on CNC3 last night said it would be mean­ing­less if the po­lice wrote to the Google with­out the as­sis­tance of the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice, which would li­aise with the rel­e­vant fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to seek the in­for­ma­tion on be­half of T&T.

Such a re­quest can on­ly be chan­neled through the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty, a de­part­ment in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, which han­dles all le­gal mat­ters un­der the Mu­tu­al Le­gal As­sis­tance Treaty to gath­er crim­i­nal ev­i­dence in for­eign states.West's state­ments have con­tra­dict­ed claims by in­ves­ti­ga­tors, in­clud­ing for­mer deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Mervyn Richard­son, that Google had been con­tact­ed last year in the email­gate probe which lev­elled damn­ing al­le­ga­tions against top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Asked about the con­flict­ing re­ports con­cern­ing Google yes­ter­day, Po­lice Ser­vice pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer In­sp Wayne Mys­tar said:

"My in­for­ma­tion is that Google was en­gaged. How­ev­er, Google op­er­ates with­in cer­tain le­gal pa­ra­me­ters and we are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with the team from the DPP's de­part­ment to sat­is­fy those re­quire­ments and we ex­pect full co-op­er­a­tion in the near fu­ture."But ac­cord­ing to West: "Google is not ob­lig­at­ed to re­spond to a let­ter from Mr Richard­son as the head or lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor. Google will on­ly re­spond to a sub­poe­na from a US court."

He main­tained that any of­fi­cial re­quest to Google to pre­serve e-mails from its clients must pass through the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty or else it would be mean­ing­less.West said the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors "can­not re­ly on that (cor­re­spon­dence sent by Richard­son) be­cause there is noth­ing com­pelling Google to hold that in­fo so I can't see that hap­pen­ing."He said he re­mained baf­fled over why the po­lice have not max­imised the use of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

"The po­lice should have gone through the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty from day one and asked for this in­for­ma­tion and they could from day one have asked for this in­for­ma­tion to be kept while we gath­er ev­i­dence to build its case."In oth­er words, the po­lice could have al­ready had their hands on the e-mails, if they ex­ist," he added.Such ap­pli­ca­tions, he said, were usu­al­ly processed with­in two to three months be­fore the court or­der or sub­poe­na was is­sued.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Glenn Hack­ett, who is now in charge of the e-mail probe, said ear­li­er this week that po­lice have of­fi­cial­ly en­gaged Google but "there are cer­tain le­gal pa­ra­me­ters with­in which they have to op­er­ate."An ex­clu­sive T&T Guardian sto­ry on Tues­day re­port­ed that US In­ter­net search gi­ant Google's lat­est trans­paren­cy re­port, pub­lished on its Web site, showed it had re­ceived no re­quests for in­for­ma­tion from T&T.

Google's le­gal process

Google lays bare on its pub­lic pol­i­cy blog ex­act­ly how gov­ern­ments can go about re­ceiv­ing da­ta from the in­ter­net search gi­ant."We re­quire that gov­ern­ment agen­cies con­duct­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions use a search war­rant to com­pel us to pro­vide a user's search query in­for­ma­tion and pri­vate con­tent stored in a Google ac­count, such as e-mail mes­sages, doc­u­ments, pho­tos and YouTube videos."

In­ves­ti­ga­tion

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley had made the claim last May that he had in his pos­ses­sion e-mails pur­port­ed­ly from the ad­dress of the top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials – Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan – de­tail­ing al­le­ga­tions of a plot to tap the phone of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and harm a T&T Guardian jour­nal­ist who broke the sto­ry about the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011, which favoured gov­ern­ment fi­nanciers on crim­i­nal charges.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her col­leagues de­nied any knowl­edge of the e-mails and claimed they were fab­ri­ca­tions but the PM called for an im­me­di­ate po­lice probe of the mat­ter.Richard­son was ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions and in­ter­viewed sev­er­al peo­ple named in the e-mails and sought com­put­ers and elec­tron­ic de­vices used by the politi­cians.How­ev­er, Richard­son re­tired in No­vem­ber with not much head­way be­ing made in the case. He is now head of the Rapid Re­sponse Unit un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.


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