Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds must break their si­lence and give the sta­tus and where­abouts of 41 il­le­gal cam­eras which are un­ac­count­ed for af­ter 23 oth­er cam­eras were dis­cov­ered mount­ed on TTEC poles mon­i­tor­ing po­lice sta­tions.

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein made the call at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas.

Cit­ing the T&T Guardian’s sto­ry on Sat­ur­day which re­port­ed the dis­cov­ery of the 23 il­le­gal cam­eras mon­i­tor­ing po­lice sta­tion ac­tiv­i­ty in Arou­ca, St Joseph and Tu­na­puna, Ho­sein said there must be an emer­gency meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to as­cer­tain the facts of this is­sue, which af­fects all in T&T.

“... Es­pe­cial­ly af­ter a po­lice ex­er­cise which in­di­cates there are 41 more il­le­gal cam­eras that re­main un­ac­count­ed for, we need to know their sta­tus,” Ho­sein added.

Ho­sein said the dis­cov­ery of CCTV cam­eras il­le­gal­ly mount­ed by gangs mon­i­tor­ing cer­tain po­lice sta­tions was “chill­ing and wor­ry­ing”.

Ho­sein cit­ed the is­sues in­volved with the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) probe and oth­er re­ports on the mur­der last No­vem­ber of Andy Daniel, a pri­vate CCTV tech­ni­cian op­er­a­tor who was the hus­band of the SSA’s then-deputy di­rec­tor.

Ho­sein not­ed an ar­ti­cle stat­ing that Daniel al­so in­stalled cam­eras at some min­is­ters’ homes and had kept ad­min­is­tra­tion rights to the cam­era sys­tems (which in­clud­ed some of T&T’s top of­fi­cials, busi­ness­men and gang­sters) which could re­mote­ly tap in­to any point, mak­ing it a valu­able com­mod­i­ty for in­tel­li­gence and crim­i­nal el­e­ments use and abuse. How much Daniel shared about his busi­ness with the SSA is now part of the SSA probe.

Ho­sein cit­ed oth­er re­ports claim­ing Daniel’s mur­der con­cerned a civil­ian (not his rel­a­tive) who once worked at the SSA and had abused his pow­er, and that there were con­cerns about a se­cu­ri­ty threat fol­low­ing the in­fil­tra­tion of the SSA by civil­ians sus­pect­ed to be us­ing it for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ho­sein added,“And now Trinidad and To­ba­go has learned gangs were us­ing TTEC poles to in­stall CCTV cam­eras and routers to mon­i­tor po­lice sta­tions.”

Bran­dish­ing a May 10 po­lice re­port on this, he said the fo­cus was on cam­eras mount­ed on TTEC light poles in the Tu­na­puna and Bas­an­ta Trace ar­eas with­out TTEC’s per­mis­sion.

He not­ed that writ­ten per­mis­sion was need­ed to mount any item/cam­era on a TTEC pole.

Ho­sein said a to­tal of 23 cam­eras found were re­moved from the Tu­na­puna and Bas­an­ta Trace ar­eas.

“We learned these cam­eras were be­ing manned by gang mem­bers on the look­out to alert oth­er mem­bers with il­le­gal firearms and nar­cotics in their pos­ses­sion, there­by thwart­ing law en­force­ment ef­forts.”

How­ev­er, Ho­sein said there was a po­lice ex­er­cise in Bangladesh, St Joseph, be­lieved to be a mon­i­tor­ing hub, which was out­fit­ted with two large TV screens show­ing a to­tal of 62 cam­eras record­ing live feeds of the St Joseph, Arou­ca and Tu­na­puna po­lice sta­tions.

“If they re­cov­ered 23 cam­eras and there were 62 feeds that means 41 cam­eras are un­ac­count­ed for. I call on the Min­is­ter and Prime Min­is­ter to in­di­cate whether or not they’ve un­cov­ered and dis­man­tled those 41 il­le­gal cam­eras that are un­ac­count­ed for,” Ho­sein said.

“We call for a full scale probe in­to this mat­ter.

“There must be im­me­di­ate and com­plete over­haul of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­ven­to­ry in T&T to de­ter­mine whether or not all of our cam­eras are ac­count­ed for. TTEC must al­so in­ves­ti­gate if there are any il­le­gal cam­eras erect­ed on any oth­er TTEC poles through­out T&T.”

Ho­sein al­so called on the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to in­ves­ti­gate whether any of­fices of the DPP were be­ing mon­i­tored; and for the Ju­di­cia­ry to check if any court/fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing mon­i­tored by il­le­gal cam­eras.

“I call on fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and banks to al­so de­ter­mine if their places of busi­ness are be­ing mon­i­tored by il­le­gal cam­eras. We’ve seen a wave of peo­ple be­ing robbed as soon as they ex­it banks with large sums ... we don’t know if these banks are be­ing mon­i­tored,” he said.

“I call on the busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T to re­spond to this mat­ter, as it’s a grave con­cern for busi­ness­es and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions’ op­er­a­tions.”

Hinds did not re­ply to ques­tions sent on the is­sue by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. Row­ley’s in Ghana par­tic­i­pat­ing in the King’s Sil­ver Ju­bilee cel­e­bra­tions there.

TTEC of­fi­cials mean­while said they could not com­ment on the mat­ter as there were now na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions.