Tax­pay­ers have been foot­ing a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar bill since Jan­u­ary 2020 for spy­ware equip­ment ob­tained by for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

The equip­ment which has cost the TTPS $27.77 mil­lion and count­ing so far, is en­gaged in a four-year lease agree­ment with an Eu­ro­pean com­pa­ny but has not been op­er­a­tional for sev­er­al months.

While law en­force­ment has the equip­ment in hand, it has not been func­tion­ing for the last eight months due to tech­ni­cal and oth­er chal­lenges.

The TTPS, mean­while, con­tin­ues to fork out a whop­ping $992,000 per month for the spy­ware com­pa­ny for the soft­ware and tech­ni­cal sup­port from the com­pa­ny.

 The TTPS has an­oth­er year and nine months still left on the lease agree­ment.

Two high-rank­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources and Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob con­firmed this to the Sun­day Guardian last week. For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith al­so con­firmed the present lease agree­ment in place for the spy­ware.

If the TTPS con­tin­ues with the four-year lease agree­ment it would cost tax­pay­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly $47.6 mil­lion.

Ja­cob, in con­firm­ing the month­ly sum that the TTPS has to pay for the spy­ware, said that it was plac­ing a heavy fi­nan­cial bur­den on the TTPS.

"I am con­sid­er­ing stop­ping the pay­ments for the equip­ment," he said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Ja­cob added that there would be no penal­ty in­curred by the TTPS for ter­mi­nat­ing the arrange­ment since it would have been "a part­ner­ship through the Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence Agency sec­re­tari­at."

Acting Commissioner of Police McDonald Jacob.

ROBERTO CODALLO

Is the spy­ware Pe­ga­sus?

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources who met with this in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist face to face last week con­firmed that the spy­ware leased through the TTPS was not Pe­ga­sus as al­lud­ed to by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over the last few weeks.

One source stat­ed that it was an­oth­er brand of spy­ware (name called) that was leased by the TTPS from the for­eign com­pa­ny (not Is­raeli). The oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty source, how­ev­er, re­fused to con­firm or de­ny whether this was the brand of spy­ware now in pos­ses­sion of the TTPS and SSA. As such, the Sun­day Guardian de­cid­ed to with­hold the name as we could not ver­i­fy the ex­act brand of spy­ware.

Dur­ing our re­search of the name of the Eu­ro­pean com­pa­ny giv­en by the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty source, how­ev­er, it was dis­cov­ered that they had formed a ques­tion­able al­liance with sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies in 2019.

Ja­cob was mum about the name of the spy­ware and com­pa­ny cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, while Grif­fith said, "It is ir­re­spon­si­ble to op­er­ate like oth­er politi­cians who would give you the type of equip­ment and the ca­pa­bil­i­ties. On­ly politi­cians who have no in­tel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ty will be bold enough to tell the me­dia or any­one about the ca­pa­bil­i­ty or ca­pac­i­ty and type of equip­ment or the brand or mod­el of the in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing equip­ment."

 One of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources felt it was nec­es­sary to put every­thing in­to con­text to avoid this sen­si­tive mat­ter be­com­ing a "po­lit­i­cal foot­ball" that could pos­si­bly leave the pub­lic "mis­in­formed and more mis­guid­ed."

This se­nior na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty source with more than 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence ex­plained, "We have re­viewed sev­er­al re­ports from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and in them, the SSA con­firmed that in 2020 the TTPS did pur­chase a so­lu­tion that had some in­ter­cept ca­pa­bil­i­ty. Based on its method­ol­o­gy, the sys­tem can be used for le­gal in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and is in no way com­par­a­tive to the Pe­ga­sus spy­ware so­lu­tion."

An­oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty source fa­mil­iar with the spy­ware tech­nol­o­gy used by the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices in T&T said "the Pe­ga­sus pack­age is not on­ly by far su­pe­ri­or in ca­pa­bil­i­ty but al­so in cost, and I am cer­tain it may not even be af­ford­able for the TTPS based on their bud­get al­lo­ca­tion."

Former commissioner of police Gary Griffith.

Who sanc­tioned the spy­ware?

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, he had fi­nan­cial over­sight of the cost of the spy­ware and nev­er ex­ceed­ed the stip­u­lat­ed amount which he could sign off on as claimed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance re­cent­ly.

"If it was a pur­chase then there would have been a con­cern per­tain­ing to ac­count­abil­i­ty, it was a lease sort of a rental agree­ment. So that is why in con­trast to the mis­lead­ing state­ment by the Min­istry of Fi­nance where they said that I went over the amount stip­u­lat­ed for me as the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the po­lice ser­vice that is not true, once it is a lease agree­ment to rent it and along that line."

Grif­fith claimed he was well with­in his re­mit. Any pay­ment ex­ceed­ing one mil­lion would have to be ap­proved through the rel­e­vant min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice un­der which the TTPS falls.

The politi­cians con­tin­ue to wran­gle in pub­lic about the spy­ware cre­at­ing con­tro­ver­sy over its ac­qui­si­tion. Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sought to clear the air in Par­lia­ment two Fri­days ago when he in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment was not us­ing the Is­raeli Pe­ga­sus to spy on cit­i­zens.

Row­ley al­so claimed that his gov­ern­ment "re­sist­ed re­peat­ed at­tempts by a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice to ob­tain, own and utilise in­ter­cept tech­nol­o­gy by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice”.

The prime min­is­ter al­so al­leged that this coun­try's for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice al­so pro­cured the in­ter­cep­tion so­lu­tion with­out ap­proval and that he had or­dered him to hand it over to the SSA.

But Grif­fith told Sun­day Guardian "I was li­ais­ing con­stant­ly with the then min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. We had con­ver­sa­tions per­tain­ing to how it will be used and when it will be used. That is why they backed off now be­cause when I start­ed to re­mind them that we had con­ver­sa­tions that were held and they were ful­ly aware when I was look­ing for it when I was plan­ning to get it, how it was to be used, and they were very in­ter­est­ed and very ex­cit­ed," said Grif­fith.

One of the se­nior na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources al­so told the Sun­day Guardian that he had been in­formed about sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions that Grif­fith had with the for­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young on this mat­ter. "I on­ly learned about this af­ter, but I was cer­tain they could have in­clud­ed a few peo­ple in that con­ver­sa­tion if need­ed."

Two ques­tions were sent to Young on Wednes­day via What­sApp, first ask­ing if he had con­ver­sa­tions with Grif­fith sur­round­ing the pur­port­ed pur­chase of the spy­ware equip­ment and, if so, what did he ar­tic­u­late in a gen­er­al sense in his con­ver­sa­tions?

Sun­day Guardian reached out to Young via What­sApp and called him yes­ter­day, but he did not re­spond.

Grif­fith had al­so in­sist­ed that Young sound­ed "in­ter­est­ed and ex­cit­ed" about the prospect of the spy­ware that would al­leged­ly be used to catch crim­i­nals. Young was asked if he and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment shared this sen­ti­ment. Young nev­er re­spond­ed to ques­tions on the is­sue.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Grif­fith de­nies PM's claims of be­ing or­dered to hand over equip­ment

Grif­fith in­sist­ed that he was nev­er or­dered by any gov­ern­ment per­son­nel to hand over the spy equip­ment to the SSA. "No gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial forced me to hand over equip­ment to the SSA. That was based on me mak­ing that de­ci­sion on my own in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the SSA. It is in to­tal con­trast to the lie by Dr Kei­th Row­ley that they had giv­en me an in­struc­tion to hand it over, that was a bla­tant lie! At no time did any gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial give me any in­struc­tion to do so."

Ja­cob said it was on­ly when he came in­to of­fice on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2021, as Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that he be­came aware of the equip­ment be­ing hand­ed over to the SSA on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2021. "I was not the act­ing ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the TTPS at that time. If you check the dates you will see that. The on­ly time I had any mea­sure of con­trol was be­tween Sep­tem­ber 21 to Oc­to­ber 15 and the records would show that," de­clared Ja­cob.

Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

So what's the agree­ment be­tween the SSA and the TTPS?

Grif­fith said that the equip­ment was not hand­ed over, but that a con­tract made joint­ly stat­ed that the equip­ment will be used be­tween both par­ties. "There was some­thing called the back­pack, it has noth­ing to do with the equip­ment it­self. The back­pack was hand­ed over to the SSA but it still be­longed un­der the TTPS, so if any­one want­ed to use it both sides had to agree to it. There were two pieces of equip­ment–one is the back­pack that will do the in­ter­cep­tion and the oth­er was the serv­er. We (TTPS) had both at first.

"I gave SSA the back­pack for it to be used any­time. If you use the back­pack you need the serv­er that the po­lice had up un­til I left. If it is you want to use the serv­er they need the back­pack to do the in­ter­cep­tion which SSA has, that is how we do it. I split the as­set to en­sure that no one unit could utilise the equip­ment. Up un­til I left we still had the serv­er," ex­plained Grif­fith.

 Grif­fith said he had re­cruit­ed a con­sul­tant who had worked with the Spe­cial In­tel­li­gence Agency to de­vel­op in­ter­nal poli­cies to as­sist the de­part­ment in hav­ing a ro­bust op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure. As a re­sult of these changes, the piece of equip­ment in the TTPS's pos­ses­sion had to be used for the train­ing which was phys­i­cal­ly be­ing held at the SSA lo­ca­tion. This would have been the on­ly time both halves of the sys­tem would have been to­geth­er and it was for train­ing. Up to when I left, the part of the equip­ment man­aged by TTPS was still of­fi­cial­ly man­aged by TTPS."

 Ja­cob con­firmed that "the serv­er was lat­er hand­ed over to the SSA as the TTPS could not man­age par­tic­u­lar re­quire­ments and the SSA was tech­ni­cal­ly more equipped to do so."

SSA took con­trol of all spy equip­ment, but it re­mains TTPS prop­er­ty

One of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources shed fur­ther light on the is­sue stat­ing that the SSA was giv­en con­trol of the servers and en­tire sys­tem in De­cem­ber 2021. "Be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2021 and March 2022 the sys­tem was un­used due to nec­es­sary up­grades and ad­di­tion­al hard­ware re­quired. The SSA re­port­ed to us that the de­vice was not used by the TTPS to in­ter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This was main­ly due to the num­ber of up­dates to the servers and a tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tion with the de­vices.

"The SSA re­ports al­so re­vealed that the SSA did not use the equip­ment to per­form any type of in­ter­cep­tion as it is not ful­ly con­fig­ured to fit the lev­el of func­tion­al­i­ty re­quired. The equip­ment hav­ing been or­dered by the TTPS re­mains its 'prop­er­ty', hence the part­ner­ship that has been ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the Act­ing CoP."

The source al­so added, "I can tell you that the SSA has al­ready sub­mit­ted all its an­nu­al re­ports to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. All the SSA re­ports re­viewed by a se­nior of­fi­cer em­pha­sised that all in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion car­ried out is in keep­ing with the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Amend­ed Act 2020 (IO­CA)."

Re­spond­ing to re­cent claims made on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form the oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty source said, "There is doc­u­ment­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the tar­get­ing of any de­vice from which com­mu­ni­ca­tion is in­ter­cept­ed. In­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a dig­i­tal trans­ac­tion, sim­i­lar to a bank­ing trans­ac­tion, and there­fore it is very sim­ple to ver­i­fy or dis­prove al­le­ga­tions of mis­use. "Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the se­cu­ri­ty vet­ting in the agency cou­pled with heavy fines and jail time as­so­ci­at­ed with a breach of IO­CA al­so serves as se­ri­ous de­ter­rents against mis­use."

The source added that the hu­man re­source staff at the agency was small and it was vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for them to in­ter­cept every cit­i­zen's phone, rather their main fo­cus re­mained on high-pro­file un­der­world fig­ures and oth­er peo­ple of in­ter­est that pose a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The source added that in many in­stances they are in­ter­cept­ing the same peo­ple for sev­er­al hours dai­ly due to their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"I think it's not ac­cu­rate to state that every phone of cit­i­zens is tapped. Re­mem­ber there is a le­gal process and there al­so has to be a col­lab­o­ra­tion with ser­vice providers to en­sure this can oc­cur. If at any time these ser­vice providers make changes to their sys­tem then we have to re­cal­i­brate every­thing. Plain and sim­ple, it's not just a plug-in and lis­ten like what you see in the movies."

Penal­ties

A per­son who in­ten­tion­al­ly in­ter­cepts com­mu­ni­ca­tion is li­able un­der a sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion of sev­en years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

If in­dict­ed at the High Court they face a fine of one mil­lion dol­lars and 15 years in prison.

*An au­tho­rised of­fi­cer who know­ing­ly con­tra­venes sub­sec­tion (8) com­mits an of­fence and is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and to im­pris­on­ment for two years.

17. (1) In this sec­tion, “sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion” means…of­fence and is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of three hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and to im­pris­on­ment for five years.

2) A per­son who in­ten­tion­al­ly dis­clos­es the con­tents of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion—

(a) ob­tained by means of a war­rant, to a per­son to whom he is not au­tho­rised to dis­close the com­mu­ni­ca­tion;

(b) ob­tained in the course of the in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to a per­son to whom he is not au­tho­rised to dis­close the com­mu­ni­ca­tion whether the in­ter­cep­tion oc­curred pri­or to or af­ter the com­mence­ment of this Act; or

(c) ob­tained in con­tra­ven­tion of this Act,

com­mits an of­fence and is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars and to im­pris­on­ment for three years.

(3) Sub­sec­tion (2) shall not ap­ply to the dis­clo­sure.

(The In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Amend­ment) Act 2020)

Is­raeli spy­ware com­pa­ny di­rects Sun­day Guardian

ques­tions to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry

The Is­raeli Aero­space In­dus­tries (IAI), the spy­ware com­pa­ny that the Op­po­si­tion leader al­leged was re­tained by the State to in­tro­duce spy­ware, mal­ware and in­ter­cep­tion ser­vices, has di­rect­ed all ques­tions about its links to the Gov­ern­ment to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

On Tues­day, the Sun­day Guardian wrote to IAI about the al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Sun­day Guardian asked the fol­low­ing:

1. Can the com­pa­ny con­firm whether it has de­ployed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Trinidad for train­ing?

2. Is any mem­ber or rep­re­sen­ta­tive of IAI or ELTA Sys­tems Ltd (ELTA) in Trinidad for work pur­pos­es?

3. Has IAI or ELTA been con­tact­ed by the Trinida­di­an au­thor­i­ties at any time to fa­cil­i­tate train­ing or the pro­vi­sion of spy­ware/mal­ware/in­ter­cep­tion equip­ment or soft­ware?

By Wednes­day IAI's Man­ag­er of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and PR, Daf­na Ravitz re­spond­ed.

Ravitz stat­ed, "Please send your ques­tions to the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the MNS (Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty), Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Sun­day Guardian did that and is await­ing a re­sponse.

At the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' Mon­day Night Fo­rum, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of spy­ing on cit­i­zens. She lat­er named IAI and its sub­sidiary ELTA as the com­pa­nies linked to the State for the spy­ware ap­pli­ca­tions.

On Mon­day Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the il­le­gal spy­ing was aid­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers and be­ing done on mem­bers of the me­dia, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, ju­di­cia­ry, State boards, PNM MPs and sen­a­tors, some PN­Mites’ spous­es, trade unions and the Op­po­si­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had warned pre­vi­ous­ly about the Gov­ern­ment ac­quir­ing the Is­raeli Pe­ga­sus soft­ware pro­gramme to hack in­to cit­i­zens’ What­sApp com­mu­ni­ca­tion and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions and went on to con­firm that the soft­ware was ac­quired by the State.

She claimed that a whistle­blow­er gave her the in­for­ma­tion which in­clude the names of peo­ple be­ing spied on.

Since then there has been a back and forth be­tween Persd-Bissess­er and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds and Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to bring proof of her claims, and she hit back say­ing that she was not "tak­ing that bait."

Last April it was re­port­ed that a plane with 50 Is­raeli na­tion­als land­ed in the coun­try and that they were here for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.

The Sun­day Guardian could not ver­i­fy if the Is­raeli com­pa­ny was pro­vid­ing some oth­er type of ser­vice to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.–Renu­ka Singh