Gail Alexan­der

No ev­i­dence from Kam­la!

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the PNM Gov­ern­ment will not bait her in­to "bring­ing ev­i­dence" to name peo­ple who are be­ing il­le­gal­ly spied up­on.

And she’s now called for Gov­ern­ment to say if it is us­ing an­oth­er type of spy­ware - Cytrox’s Preda­tor spy­ware - as a 2021 Cana­di­an ar­ti­cle claims.

"I bring no ev­i­dence for you fool­ish peo­ple– none what­so­ev­er. I will bring no ev­i­dence!” Per­sad-Bisses­sar added at Mon­day night’s UNC fo­rum meet­ing.

She was re­spond­ing to calls by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to do so. Row­ley last week deemed as false, her claims on Pe­ga­sus in­ter­cept equip­ment and that peo­ple in sec­tors from the mag­is­tra­cy to me­dia were be­ing il­le­gal­ly spied up­on.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that peo­ple were be­ing il­le­gal­ly spied up­on. Not­ing the calls for "ev­i­dence" to be pro­duced she said the PNM’s plan was to try to “Bait me… but I’m smarter than that."

"You want me to call names and I will en­dan­ger and com­pro­mise peo­ple by call­ing their names. I will not call their names!” I won’t take bas­ket from you guys, you’re not go­ing to bait me to do that!”

She said when Row­ley brought the “fake emails” (dur­ing the PP Gov­ern­ment’s term) he brought no ev­i­dence to Par­lia­ment even though the emails were "some­thing a child could have made up."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that UNC has to con­sid­er if it will file a mo­tion of priv­i­lege against Row­ley – seek­ing to take him to Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges com­mit­tee - on his re­cent state­ments on the in­ter­cept equip­ment.

She claimed he's made con­flict­ing state­ments, say­ing dif­fer­ent things at a Diego Mar­tin meet­ing and in Par­lia­ment last week – that equip­ment was on­ly used on crim­i­nals, that it was with Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency and then say­ing there was no spy­ware.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar who al­so cit­ed a 2021 ar­ti­cle from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, called on Gov­ern­ment to say if it is us­ing Cytrox's Preda­tor spy­ware which she said is like the Pe­ga­sus spy­ware.

She claimed the re­port stat­ed T&T is among coun­tries where it's be­ing used and two servers in­volved are "for­wardeshoptt.com" and "guardian-tt.me".

She added "I won­der if it's the Guardian jour­nal­ists they spy­ing on...I don't know...Is this Cana­di­an ar­ti­cle a lie? How long has Preda­tor soft­ware been used on spy on cit­i­zens? You bring the ev­i­dence that it's not (be­ing used.) If Gov­ern­ment de­nies it's be­ing used, then who's us­ing it?"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Hinds to say why he didn’t tell T&T an Is­raeli Aero­space In­dus­tries IAI (Elta Sys­tems Ltd firm was do­ing in­ter­cept train­ing here Mon­day and Tues­day. Ques­tion­ing how much the train­ing cost, she not­ed the same com­pa­ny was once hacked.” And this is the com­pa­ny they bring to train peo­ple?!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that dur­ing the lock­down an Is­raeli plane had land­ed here and she ques­tioned why the oc­cu­pants of the plane had come to T&T. She claimed they nev­er left.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar threat­ened to take Hinds to court to force him to pro­duce re­ports on the op­er­a­tions of the SSA af­ter 2017. She said the last re­port of 2016-2017 showed there were 750,276 in­ter­cepts, "Who were all those peo­ple in those in­ter­cepts?”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Gov­ern­ment to say if it is go­ing to shut down Es­tate Busi­ness Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EM­B­DC) if it los­es cas­es against the en­ti­ty. She said she re­ceived a Cab­i­net (April 7, 2022) minute from a PNM MP on this and the new Sin­gle Point of Au­thor­i­ty.