Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said yes­ter­day that the po­lice had tak­en a “dim view” of the unau­tho­rised sur­veil­lance cam­eras dis­cov­ered in Sea Lots on Tues­day.

The 22 cam­eras and four dig­i­tal video recorders (DVRs), which had been in­stalled on elec­tric­i­ty poles and trees, were found by T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) tech­ni­cians and po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing raids in dif­fer­ent parts of Sea Lots. Po­lice sus­pect the de­vices were part of an “ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem” for crim­i­nals to alert them about po­lice pa­trols and the pres­ence of ri­val gang mem­bers.

Sim­i­lar de­vices were found last May in Bas­san­ta Trace, St Au­gus­tine, and Monte Grande, Tu­na­puna, where po­lice sus­pect they were al­so used by crim­i­nals to keep track of po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ben­jamin said while cit­i­zens have the right to in­stall cam­eras at their homes for per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic spaces are off-lim­its.

“It’s im­por­tant for peo­ple to un­der­stand that they can put up cam­eras on their own home, but when you put it up on lamp posts and all these things, you are go­ing too far and we will not tol­er­ate that in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“Per­sons can­not do that to spy on oth­er per­sons ... you have a right to your prop­er­ty, but on­ly per­sons so au­tho­rised can place it on lamp posts and oth­er places.

“There can­not be any com­mu­ni­ty tak­ing it up­on them­selves to do that, that is out­side of the law any­one do­ing so will be dealt with for the full re­sponse of the law.”

Po­lice be­lieve cam­eras were in­stalled by a gang leader in the com­mu­ni­ty who was de­tained ear­li­er this year as part of the clam­p­down on or­gan­ised crime fig­ures un­der the state of emer­gency (SoE).

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant and for­mer di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Garvin Heer­ah de­scribed the trend of crim­i­nals us­ing cam­eras for sur­veil­lance as a “cal­cu­lat­ed tac­tic,” and warned that sim­i­lar strate­gies are used abroad.

Heer­ah rec­om­mend­ed a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mas­ter­mind be­hind the cam­eras in Sea Lots us­ing dif­fer­ent arms of law en­force­ment and var­i­ous tech­no­log­i­cal tools.

“This in­ci­dent un­der­scores the need for de­tailed, in­tru­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the pur­pose and ori­gin of these cam­eras. Law en­force­ment must pur­sue covert in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing op­er­a­tions to map the crim­i­nal in­fra­struc­ture sup­port­ing these sur­veil­lance ef­forts.

“A com­pre­hen­sive foren­sic analy­sis of the seized de­vices is es­sen­tial to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial da­ta stor­age, re­mote ac­cess links, and con­nect­ed crim­i­nal net­works. Fur­ther­more, this sit­u­a­tion high­lights the ne­ces­si­ty for en­hanced counter-sur­veil­lance mea­sures, in­clud­ing elec­tron­ic de­tec­tion sweeps and re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing of unau­tho­rised sur­veil­lance in­stal­la­tions in high-risk ar­eas,” he said.

Fail­ure to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to such threats could em­bold­en crim­i­nals to ex­pand their ter­ri­to­ries, Heer­ah warned. —Shane Su­perville