At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Faris Al-Rawi says the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) can­not in­ter­cept calls and spy on cit­i­zens as was be­ing claimed by the Op­po­si­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing the week­ly post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing, at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­ster, yes­ter­day Al-Rawi dis­missed con­cerns that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion threat­ened free­dom of the press.

Dur­ing de­bate on a bill to ex­pand the man­date of the SSA, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ex­pressed se­ri­ous con­cerns about the leg­is­la­tion, say­ing it spy on cit­i­zens and even the me­dia would be un­der threat.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Daren Lee Sing was al­so quot­ed as ex­press­ing con­cern over the SSA bill as there were per­ceived threats to me­dia work­ers.

Al-Rawi said the in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion can on­ly be legal­ly done by the Chief of De­fence Staff, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of the SSA.

"The on­ly way that sur­veil­lance is per­mit­ted on any­one, any or­di­nary cit­i­zen, the me­dia, any­one, is un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Act," he said.

He said Sec­tion 6 of that Act pro­vides for a war­rant to be grant­ed by a High Court judge and on­ly af­ter that was done "you can en­gage in sur­veil­lance and that (on­ly) au­tho­rised of­fi­cers can en­gage in sur­veil­lance for very lim­it­ed pur­pos­es of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as de­fined in the leg­is­la­tion."

He re­mind­ed the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Act was ap­proved by the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment with the then PNM Op­po­si­tion sup­port in 2010.

The AG said the Op­po­si­tion's claims were "ex­treme­ly ridicu­lous. So I'd like to just dis­miss that out of hand.""Any­thing to deal with ar­rests, pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tion are not con­duct­ed by the SSA. They are not con­duct­ed by the politi­cians. Those mat­ters are for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the DPP (Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions)," he said.

The bill re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote for ap­proval. It was al­ready passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Al Rawi said the bill had noth­ing to fear about the leg­is­la­tion "be­cause there is no law in re­la­tion to cy­ber­crime which could prej­u­dice the me­dia."Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Stu­art Young said the Op­po­si­tion was mis­lead­ing cit­i­zens on the SSA bill, adding that there are two lev­els of ac­count­abil­i­ty for the agency, the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.