To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rev­e­la­tions about the ex­tent of wire­tap­ping un­der­tak­en by the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) prompt­ed strong re­ac­tions from per­sons iden­ti­fied as sub­jects of this sur­veil­lance as well as those who have a vest­ed in­ter­est in the law­ful op­er­a­tion of jus­tice in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Among those mak­ing a state­ment on the is­sue was the Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In a state­ment to the me­dia on No­vem­ber 18, the Ju­di­cia­ry sent a note of "Grave con­cern over elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance" re­gard­ing the rev­e­la­tions by the Prime Min­is­ter.

On the sur­face of things, many of the con­cerns ex­pressed by the Ju­di­cia­ry are en­tire­ly in align­ment with those ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the gen­er­al pub­lic and more specif­i­cal­ly, those who have been named and oth­ers who have rea­son to sus­pect that they have been in­clud­ed for no good rea­son on this list of ob­served per­sons. Clear­ly, part of the rea­son for this state­ment from the Ju­di­cia­ry is its con­cern that mem­bers of its au­gust ranks were part of this sur­veil­lance project and, as it not­ed in the re­lease, there are le­git­i­mate con­cerns that such ac­tions might lead to "an un­der­min­ing of its in­de­pen­dence and the prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice." In its haste to ex­press con­cern over the wire­tap­ping is­sue, how­ev­er, the Ju­di­cia­ry may have over­stepped its role from the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice to the in­flu­enc­ing of mat­ters like­ly to come be­fore its own courts.

By No­vem­ber 18, sev­er­al of those named on the SIA's wire­tap­ping list were said to be con­sid­er­ing their le­gal op­tions in the sit­u­a­tion, putting the Ju­di­cia­ry as an in­sti­tu­tion on no­tice that the il­le­gal wire­tap­ping ex­er­cise might be mi­grat­ing from a mat­ter ar­tic­u­lat­ed to give po­lit­i­cal of­fense to spe­cif­ic le­gal chal­lenges of the au­thor­i­ty of the SIA to gath­er in­for­ma­tion about pri­vate cit­i­zens. While the Ju­di­cia­ry may have done noth­ing in con­tra­ven­tion of the laws of this coun­try in ex­press­ing its own grave con­cerns about the is­sue, it may have opened the door to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a chal­lenge to its ca­pac­i­ty to stand in in­de­pen­dent judge­ment of the mat­ter should it be­come a spe­cif­ic court case against the SIA's ac­tions. Fur­ther, there are el­e­ments of the state­ment which might be con­strued as be­ing po­lit­i­cal, which could not pos­si­bly have the in­ten­tion. The Ju­di­cia­ry has tak­en a clear stand against the wire­tap­ping is­sue in its me­dia re­lease, and while the rea­sons for the state­ment are un­doubt­ed­ly jus­ti­fied, the end re­sult of mak­ing them may be far less salu­tary.

The wire­tap­ping is­sue is, with­out ques­tion, an in­flam­ma­to­ry one. Peo­ple have had their right to pri­va­cy ca­su­al­ly tram­melled with lit­tle or no rea­son and no se­ri­ous jus­ti­fi­ca­tions have been forth­com­ing. Record­ings are said to have dis­ap­peared, leav­ing emp­ty files be­hind for in­ves­ti­ga­tors to puz­zle over. Not on­ly has there been il­le­gal sur­veil­lance, but those ob­served have no guar­an­tees that the ma­te­r­i­al gath­ered is even avail­able to the gov­ern­ment for de­struc­tion. This is a time for el­der, sen­si­ble heads to pre­vail and for the rule of law and the high­est sense of ethics to dri­ve the mat­ter for­ward. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion has of­fered the gov­ern­ment clear ad­vice on the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Bill, 2010 and the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader agreed on Fri­day to es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to quick­ly re­view the bill with a view to cre­at­ing a doc­u­ment that both par­ties can agree on and pass in Par­lia­ment.

These are crit­i­cal mat­ters that are nec­es­sary to move na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty past the mis­takes of the past to a more ac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion in which the rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tions of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are bal­anced by the ne­ces­si­ty for sur­veil­lance of sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals. For its part, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, hav­ing opened the wire­tap­ping is­sue to pub­lic scruti­ny must in­sti­tute an al­ter­na­tive that im­proves na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­for­mance while re­spect­ing the rights of pri­vate cit­i­zens that re­mains en­shrined in our con­sti­tu­tion.