Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has once again con­demned claims by the Op­po­si­tion and its leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, that the Gov­ern­ment and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice are spy­ing on cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Hinds called the Op­po­si­tion’s claims reck­less and dan­ger­ous.

He said the Is­raeli Pe­ga­sus spy soft­ware was of­fered to Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2019 but the Gov­ern­ment de­clined the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire it be­cause it con­tra­vened the laws of the coun­try.

“I can’t un­der­stand why the la­dy is try­ing to con­duct these mat­ters in the court of pub­lic opin­ion. We say we have a clear pol­i­cy—it is the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). They must op­er­ate un­der the con­fines of the law and, as far as I am aware, that’s been hap­pen­ing,” Hinds said.

The min­is­ter said the Op­po­si­tion leader’s claims are un­der­min­ing the coun­try’s re­gion­al and glob­al rep­u­ta­tion, adding Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments are to be flat­ly re­ject­ed.

“Any use of any equip­ment, in­clud­ing law en­force­ment to in­ter­cept con­ver­sa­tions, is in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion of the In­ter­cep­tion of In­for­ma­tion Act…What the Op­po­si­tion leader is re­al­ly say­ing is that there are peo­ple breach­ing laws—mag­is­trates and at­tor­neys and high-rank­ing politi­cians,” he said.

“Like the Guardian Me­dia ed­i­to­r­i­al asked—I al­so ask the op­po­si­tion leader to bring her best ev­i­dence, oth­er­wise she should be con­demned.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob de­nied any wrong­do­ing by the Po­lice Ser­vice, in­sist­ing that the TTPS does not cur­rent­ly have ac­cess to spy soft­ware.

He said that while a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice pur­chased spy­ware of less ca­pa­bil­i­ty than the Pe­ga­sus spy soft­ware, the soft­ware they ac­quired was nev­er utilised.

“That soft­ware was in two parts: one—for a pe­ri­od of time, cer­tain as­pects of it was in pos­ses­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the oth­er half was in the pos­ses­sion of the SSA,” Ja­cob said.

“With­out both merg­ing and com­ing to­geth­er, noth­ing could hap­pen. There­fore, al­so with­in there, a lot of train­ing need­ed to take place in or­der for it to be utilised.”

The po­lice’s soft­ware, Ja­cob added, was hand­ed over to the SSA last Sep­tem­ber.

“The ques­tion of po­lice util­is­ing soft­ware to spy on any­body could not have tak­en place,” Ja­cob as­sert­ed.

Op­po­si­tion leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing an Is­raeli-de­vel­oped Pe­ga­sus spy soft­ware to mon­i­tor a num­ber of peo­ple, in­clud­ing politi­cians, jour­nal­ists and mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­nied her claims on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions and again did so in the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, where he al­so called on her to bring the ev­i­dence she had to sup­port the claim to the House.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is yet to pro­duce ev­i­dence to sup­port her claims.