Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia bor­rowed a fa­mous line from late Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams to re­spond UNC ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj’s de­ci­sion to pub­li­cise Gar­cia’s per­son­al cell num­ber on­line.

“Let the jack­ass bray,” Gar­cia said at a mu­si­cal con­cert at his St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain min­istry.

Ma­haraj yes­ter­day shared Gar­cia’s num­ber on so­cial me­dia, urg­ing par­ents of the “Bel­mont Pri­ma­ry School” to call the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter on his cell­phone and com­plain about con­di­tions. This was the third min­is­ter’s num­ber Ma­haraj had post­ed on so­cial me­dia in three days.

Yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said while Ma­haraj’s in­ten­tions may have been de­signed to pro­voke con­fu­sion, the joke was on the ac­tivist.

“I’m ac­cus­tomed to my tele­phone num­ber be­ing avail­able to my burgess­es, when I served for five years on the Ari­ma Bor­ough Coun­cil and on one oc­ca­sion when I served as the deputy may­or,” Gar­cia said.

“It is noth­ing new to me. It is some­thing I’m ac­cus­tomed too and as long as my con­stituents would need my as­sis­tance through tele­phone mes­sages, I will re­spond to it.”

Gar­cia said he re­ceived 13 missed calls from the pub­lic dur­ing a meet­ing and an ad­di­tion­al four ask­ing about the Bel­mont Pri­ma­ry School. How­ev­er, he said to his knowl­edge there is no school by that name and he du­ti­ful­ly in­formed those who rang his phone on this.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had to dis­con­tin­ue use of his phone over the week­end af­ter re­ceiv­ing threat­en­ing mes­sages to his line af­ter Ma­haraj post­ed his num­ber. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s num­ber was al­so post­ed on­line by Ma­haraj on Sun­day.

While Ma­haraj’s claims his ac­tions are de­signed to en­cour­age greater trans­paren­cy and con­nect the Gov­ern­ment to the peo­ple, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James be­lieves the mo­tive is to has­ten the down­fall of the Gov­ern­ment.

He not­ed that while the act was “un­eth­i­cal” and “im­moral,” it could al­so be seen to “be good pol­i­tics,” adding that the act “doesn’t break the law.”

Ma­haraj’s act would per­haps qual­i­fy as Dox­ing, which is the In­ter­net-based prac­tice of re­search­ing and broad­cast­ing pri­vate in­for­ma­tion about an in­di­vid­ual or or­gan­i­sa­tion for var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing ex­tor­tion, co­er­cion, in­flict­ing harm, ha­rass­ment, on­line sham­ing and vig­i­lante jus­tice. Some coun­tries have leg­is­lat­ed against such acts, but T&T laws cur­rent­ly do not.

James said Ma­haraj’s ac­tions might be risqué and de­signed on­ly to hurt the Gov­ern­ment.

“If you are mere­ly re­leas­ing a num­ber be­cause ac­cord­ing to you, you want peo­ple to call the Prime Min­is­ter, then you don’t have that right.”

Mean­while, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the EquiGov In­sti­tute, Rishi Ma­haraj, says shar­ing per­son­al in­for­ma­tion when there is no pub­lic in­ter­est is on­ly a moral and eth­i­cal dilem­ma at the mo­ment.

“Be­cause we don’t have prop­er leg­is­la­tion in the coun­try deal­ing with pri­va­cy pro­tec­tion and da­ta pro­tec­tion, these things will hap­pen. Be­cause of the way tech­nol­o­gy is evolv­ing and peo­ple are us­ing dox­ing and phish­ing and oth­er means to get peo­ple’s in­for­ma­tion our laws have not caught up with tech­nol­o­gy.”

Ma­haraj ex­plained that the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act passed in 2011, which deals with the way peo­ple’s per­son­al in­for­ma­tion is stored, used, col­lect­ed and shared, was nev­er ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

He added that there must be a bal­ance be­tween per­son­al num­bers and con­stituents want­i­ng ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“You must bal­ance that ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy with un­rea­son­able in­tru­sion in one’s pri­va­cy. So call­ing and ask­ing some­one to talk about is­sues at 2 am, that in my view could be un­rea­son­able in­tru­sion in­to pri­va­cy and there could be some con­se­quences to that.”

He said the le­gal is­sues would come down to how the for­mer min­is­ter would’ve gained ac­cess to the num­bers he shared.