Sev­er­al weeks ago, our Prime Min­is­ter spoke of an in­ten­tion to con­sid­er ban­ning so­cial me­dia for a par­tic­u­lar age group. I agreed with that sug­ges­tion. The dis­cus­sion on the use of so­cial me­dia, how­ev­er, took a dif­fer­ent turn dur­ing the course of last week.

The pub­lic, me­dia, politi­cians and pro­tec­tive ser­vice have been caught up in the de­bate of what tru­ly oc­curred when Jousha Sama­roo was fa­tal­ly shot and killed by po­lice of­fi­cers. The videos from the in­ci­dent have been post­ed and shared count­less times on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

Dur­ing the course of last week, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der sug­gest­ed that leg­is­la­tion should be con­sid­ered to gov­ern how sen­si­tive ma­te­r­i­al is dis­sem­i­nat­ed in­to the pub­lic do­main. On the heels of these com­ments, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath agreed there was a need for cy­ber­crime leg­is­la­tion and to ad­dress “broad­er so­ci­etal chal­lenges linked to so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal plat­forms.”

It is easy to con­clude that there are a few rules which gov­ern so­cial me­dia us­age. Posts, videos and state­ments which are nei­ther true nor cred­i­ble can be eas­i­ly shared, reach­ing wider au­di­ences than even main­stream me­dia. In T&T, an ac­tion can be brought for defama­tion, but that seems to be the ex­tent of any con­trol that ex­ists, save and ex­cept for the lim­it­ed con­trol the plat­forms them­selves have im­ple­ment­ed as part of their agreed con­di­tions for use.

The ques­tion to be asked, though, is whether leg­is­la­tion can or will put any con­trol mech­a­nism on the court of pub­lic opin­ion. T&T’s Con­sti­tu­tion con­tains var­i­ous free­doms and rights. There are two fun­da­men­tal free­doms that any leg­is­la­tion can in­ad­ver­tent­ly be seen as im­ped­ing: the first be­ing the free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion, and the sec­ond the free­dom of the press. Any pro­posed leg­is­la­tion which af­fects these free­doms will re­quire the vote of a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in our Par­lia­ment. It is al­ways ques­tion­able whether those votes will be se­cured.

Giv­en the so­cial me­dia at­ten­tion sur­round­ing the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing, the events which fol­lowed and the var­i­ous state­ments, I have sev­er­al con­cerns about how we can leg­is­late the dis­sem­i­na­tion of sen­si­tive ma­te­r­i­al. First­ly, the video footage used and shared in this lat­est in­ci­dent did not stem from po­lice body cam­eras but rather from pri­vate CCTV footage.

Pri­vate video footage from home se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems would be con­sid­ered pri­vate prop­er­ty. Videos record­ed by any pri­vate cit­i­zen wit­ness­ing a crime or in­ci­dent can al­so be deemed as pri­vate prop­er­ty. Are we then propos­ing leg­is­la­tion that con­trols what the pub­lic can do with their pri­vate prop­er­ty?

If these record­ings were to be ac­quired by the me­dia or record­ed by me­dia per­son­nel, would we al­so leg­is­late to pre­vent the me­dia from pub­lish­ing? The pub­lish­ing of ma­te­r­i­al would not be lim­it­ed to videos; it will al­so need to con­sid­er pho­tographs, which, when cap­tured con­sec­u­tive­ly, can cre­ate an im­age just as dev­as­tat­ing as any video.

The state­ments made by Min­is­ter Alexan­der gave the im­pres­sion that the dis­cus­sion in the pub­lic do­main was of con­cern. Can we leg­is­late against pub­lic opin­ion or dis­cus­sions?

Whether the pub­lic has seen a video, pho­to­graph or heard a wit­ness ac­count, the court of pub­lic opin­ion will be­gin to buzz. There is lit­tle that can be done to pre­vent spec­u­la­tion, so­cial me­dia de­bates or the dis­sem­i­na­tion of ma­te­r­i­al, as re­li­able or un­re­li­able as that ma­te­r­i­al may be.

While so­cial me­dia con­trols may be nec­es­sary but should be to pro­mote prop­er us­age rather than to cur­tail free­doms. In­stead, what Min­is­ter Alexan­der should be fo­cused on is en­sur­ing that more body cam­eras are pur­chased for our po­lice ser­vice and of­fi­cers on spe­cial tasks or pa­trol be man­dat­ed to wear them. This will have the ef­fect of show­ing the po­lice’s point of view and jus­ti­fy their ac­tions.

Po­lice ve­hi­cles should al­so be equipped with dash cam­eras to cap­ture all nec­es­sary im­ages in in­stances of po­lice chas­es, shootouts or rou­tine po­lice stops. This will aid in all mat­ters, in­clu­sive of every­day ones such as ac­cu­sa­tions about po­lice bru­tal­i­ty or in con­test­ing traf­fic tick­ets.

Imag­ine if po­lice of­fi­cers were equipped with such de­vices, how dif­fi­cult it would be to con­test cer­tain charges when there is clear ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing?

The sit­u­a­tion cur­rent­ly un­fold­ing con­tains var­i­ous lessons to be learnt. In­stead of look­ing at the court of pub­lic opin­ion as some­thing that should be si­lenced, it should be viewed as a clear ex­am­ple of what should be done.

Agree­ably, there are var­i­ous an­gles that can be con­sid­ered. The an­gle in the pub­lic do­main is un­for­tu­nate and quite telling. If our po­lice of­fi­cers were bet­ter equipped, then the pow­ers that be would have had the ben­e­fit of dif­fer­ent an­gles to align with their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of po­lice ac­tion. In­stead, what we have is one con­cern­ing an­gle and the po­lice of­fi­cers’ con­tention of a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of events.

In­stead of si­lenc­ing the pub­lic, we should con­sid­er fix­ing the short­falls with­in the pro­tec­tive ser­vice and pro­mot­ing trust in our of­fi­cers.