KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Two for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters are de­mand­ing an­swers from the Gov­ern­ment over the leak of in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­volv­ing mem­bers of the Hadeed and Sab­ga fam­i­lies, de­scrib­ing it as a grave breach of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and call­ing for those re­spon­si­ble to be held ac­count­able.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day said the leak was one of the biggest breach­es of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, while it is not un­com­mon for the au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tions of per­sons of in­ter­est, there must be a le­git­i­mate in­tel­li­gence trig­ger.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said, “There must be a trig­ger. It can­not be based on a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion. It can­not be based on a witch hunt. There must be a trig­ger to jus­ti­fy that in­fringe­ment of your rights to pri­va­cy.”

While ques­tion­ing whether there was a law­ful ba­sis for the in­ter­cep­tion, Grif­fith called for the Di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ali­cia Hen­ry and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what he de­scribed as a cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure to safe­guard high­ly sen­si­tive in­tel­li­gence.

“I think it’s im­por­tant that the Prime Min­is­ter acts on this. Some­body has to take the fall for this. My per­son­al view is that the Di­rec­tor of the SSA and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, in times like this, in any de­vel­oped coun­try, would re­sign or be re­moved. On­ly in a ba­nana re­pub­lic some­thing like this could have tak­en place. Even the fact of them pulling back the PDO (Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der) and then try­ing to fool the coun­try. Roger Alexan­der do not lie to the coun­try,” he said.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar con­cerns, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­lez de­scribed the leak as a se­ri­ous breach of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that de­mands a full pub­lic ac­count­ing.

Gon­za­lez said the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act pro­vides strict safe­guards gov­ern­ing the use of in­ter­cep­tion war­rants, with on­ly the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Chief of De­fence Staff and the Di­rec­tor of the SSA au­tho­rised to ap­ply for such war­rants through the courts.

He not­ed that the unau­tho­rised dis­clo­sure of in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions is it­self a crim­i­nal of­fence.

More­over, he crit­i­cised the si­lence of se­nior na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials since the record­ings sur­faced pub­licly.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, who is an au­tho­rised of­fi­cer un­der the Act, the Chief of De­fence Staff and the Di­rec­tor of the SSA have not spo­ken to the coun­try on this very se­ri­ous is­sue, and by not so do­ing, they have dam­aged the con­fi­dence that cit­i­zens ought to have, not on­ly in their of­fices, but in state se­cu­ri­ty.”

He em­pha­sised that the leaked au­dio record­ings have re­newed de­bate over the State’s use of in­ter­cep­tion pow­ers, the han­dling of clas­si­fied in­tel­li­gence and the safe­guards gov­ern­ing sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tions.