Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les says he has been in con­tact with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has of­fered “sound ad­vice” fol­low­ing a cy­ber­at­tack on the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of T&T (TSTT) on Oc­to­ber 9.

Ad­dress­ing an ex­clu­sive sto­ry by Guardian Me­dia which re­vealed that per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in­clud­ing his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card num­ber, pass­port num­ber and dri­ver’s per­mit num­ber, was up­loaded to the dark web fol­low­ing the breach, Gon­za­les, told TV6 last night that he was in con­tact with Row­ley to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

He said they sought to “pro­tect the pub­lic’s in­ter­ests while get­ting to the bot­tom of the cy­ber breach”.

Guardian Me­dia has since learned that oth­er top pub­lic of­fi­cials’ da­ta had been leaked to the dark web.

Re­spond­ing to calls from Op­po­si­tion MPs for a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) to ex­am­ine how the breach hap­pened in the first place, Gon­za­les said he was not op­posed to such an en­quiry.

“Whether it (the in­ves­ti­ga­tion) is led by the TTPS, JSC or oth­er form of foren­sic probe that will ex­pose the truth in the mat­ter, I will be more than sup­port­ive.”

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that some JSCs were used by some politi­cians for “grand­stand­ing”.