UNC Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein says the Op­po­si­tion is pre­pared to go to the courts, to stop gov­ern­ment's pro­posed In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Bill be­com­ing law in this coun­try.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew show to­day, the op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor says the pro­posed law runs roughshod over each cit­i­zen's con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pri­va­cy.

Sen­a­tor Ho­sein says while they have sup­port­ed gov­ern­ment on sev­er­al crit­i­cal pieces of an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion over the past five years, they have no in­ten­tion of sup­port­ing this bill.

“We heard that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has a Plan-B, where he gave some in­di­ca­tion that the three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty may be re­moved from the bill. If that hap­pens, we are free to en­ter the courts to get this par­tic­u­lar piece of leg­is­la­tion struck down,” the op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor promis­es.

Attorney General Faris Al Rawi argues that the proposed Interception of Communication Bill follows international best practice employed in other jurisdictions, such as the US and UK.

PARLIAMENT OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Ac­cord­ing to the op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor, the at­tor­ney gen­er­al passed a law last year that made it il­le­gal for pris­on­ers to have cell phones in pris­ons, yet there seems to be no move to use cell phone jam­mers in the pris­ons.

He ob­serves that the sen­ate vice pres­i­dent made it plain why—so the state could con­tin­ue cap­tur­ing in­tel­li­gence be­ing swapped back and forth be­tween crim­i­nals in­side prison and those out­side.

Sen­a­tor ho­sein warns that gov­ern­ment’s new In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Bill won’t see the state stop at mon­i­tor­ing crim­i­nals.

He ar­gues that un­der the bill, every sin­gle cit­i­zen can have his or her pri­va­cy in­vad­ed at any time, with­out the safe­guard of the po­lice first ob­tain­ing a war­rant from a judge.

“The po­lice of­fi­cer—or the SSA or the Chief of De­fense Staff—has to sat­is­fy a judge of the High Court that this thing is so im­por­tant that they need the in­ter­cept, and that they had tried oth­er meth­ods in or­der to get the in­for­ma­tion but they weren't able to do so,” he ex­plains. “So in­ter­cep­tion is re­al­ly a mat­ter of last re­sort. Now, the at­tor­ney gen­er­al is in­tro­duc­ing this as your first port of call.”

Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein warns that the pro­posed law al­lows the State—with­out a war­rant—to lis­ten-in on cit­i­zens' pri­vate phone con­ver­sa­tions, in­ter­cept their text mes­sages and emails, and have that in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed be­fore the courts as ev­i­dence.

In ad­di­tion, he points out that cit­i­zens' stored, pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, name­ly emails, text mes­sages and phone calls, al­so can be ob­tained with­out a war­rant, for use as ev­i­dence in the courts.

He main­tains such mea­sures are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.