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Friday, July 11, 2025

Young: No more hiding behind fake profiles

by

Sharlene Rampersad
2092 days ago
20191019
National Security Minister Stuart Young interacts with an Opposition member before the start of the Standing Finance Committee on National Security in Parliament yesterday.

National Security Minister Stuart Young interacts with an Opposition member before the start of the Standing Finance Committee on National Security in Parliament yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) new so­cial me­dia sur­veil­lance pro­gramme, those who hide be­hind ‘fake’ ac­counts to com­mit crimes will be brought to jus­tice.

Young made the com­ment dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s de­bate on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill for the fi­nan­cial year 2020 in Par­lia­ment. At the time, Young was re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by Op­po­si­tion MP for Na­pari­ma Rod­ney Charles.

The TTPS was al­lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.6 bil­lion in the 2020 Bud­get and from this, $25 mil­lion is ex­pect­ed to be spent to cre­ate a cen­tre with the ca­pac­i­ty to mon­i­tor and analyse so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ty with sur­veil­lance equip­ment. This new ini­tia­tive was doc­u­ment­ed in the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan (PSIP) laid in Par­lia­ment along with oth­er Bud­get doc­u­ments on Oc­to­ber 7. 

In Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Charles said there have been sev­er­al con­cerns raised by the pub­lic since the an­nounce­ment that the po­lice will be mon­i­tor­ing so­cial me­dia.

When Young was asked to elab­o­rate on how the $25m will be used, he said, “As you and every so­phis­ti­cat­ed so­ci­ety recog­nis­es, with the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia there is a lot of ev­i­dence and a lot of in­tel­li­gence on so­cial me­dia. For ex­am­ple, those en­gaged in gang ac­tiv­i­ty, some­times they like to share a lot of the ac­tiv­i­ties that they are par­tic­i­pat­ing in and plan­ning on so­cial me­dia and the po­lice ser­vice has recog­nised there is a need to step up and to in­crease their ca­pa­bil­i­ty of mon­i­tor­ing what is on so­cial me­dia from a crim­i­nal per­spec­tive.”

Young said the po­lice will al­so mon­i­tor on­line ac­tiv­i­ty re­lat­ed to child pornog­ra­phy and hu­man traf­fick­ing. He said the pub­lic would al­so be sur­prised at the num­ber of peo­ple who use so­cial me­dia to sell drugs and guns.

Charles said most of the pub­lic con­cern about the cen­tre was fo­cused on the in­va­sion of pri­va­cy of cit­i­zens.

While Young gave the as­sur­ance that the TTPS would use the Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dures and be gov­erned by the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act (IO­CA), he said those who think they can hide be­hind so­cial me­dia should think twice.

“The as­sur­ance that I can give is once per­sons don’t break the law and don’t en­gage in crim­i­nal­i­ty they have noth­ing to be wor­ried about. If peo­ple are hid­ing and do­ing crim­i­nal acts be­hind what they be­lieve are fake pro­files and the po­lice are able to go be­hind that and find out who the re­al per­pe­tra­tors are, so be it, then suf­fer the con­se­quences of your crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Young said.

He al­so said on so­cial me­dia plat­forms such as Face­book and In­sta­gram, once an in­di­vid­ual’s pro­file is pub­lic the is­sue of in­va­sion of pri­va­cy does not arise. 

Charles al­so asked about a $25m al­lo­ca­tion for mo­bile de­vices, ques­tion­ing what it would be used for oth­er than so­cial me­dia track­ing.

Young said the mon­ey will be used to pur­chase mo­bile track­ing sys­tems, poly­graph equip­ment, pub­lic or­der equip­ment: in­clud­ing tasers, pep­per spray, can­is­ter grenades, rub­ber ba­tons and ri­ot gear. He said sur­veil­lance sys­tems and tablets for TTPS ve­hi­cles to fa­cil­i­tate a di­rect cam­era feed to the Com­mand Cen­tre would al­so be pur­chased. 

He said CoP Gary Grif­fith has full con­trol of how these al­lo­ca­tions are used as stip­u­lat­ed by Sec­tion 123A of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Young al­so ex­plained that out of the $70m al­lo­cat­ed for the TTPS to pur­chase new ve­hi­cles, a bomb dis­pos­al unit is on the cards. This is in ad­di­tion to the new Sport Util­i­ty Ve­hi­cles (SU­Vs), sedans - both marked and un­marked- bus­es for com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, ar­moured per­son­nel car­ri­ers and ri­ot con­trol ve­hi­cles.


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