Recent news coming out of the twin island republic of Trinidad and Tobago has raised regional eyebrows, spurring reassessment of some aspects of the security services in that country.
On Thursday last Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced to an incredulous nation that what might be regarded as a clandestine security “wiretapping” operation had been taking place without her knowledge, and that these operations of the Security Intelligence Agency were spying on law-abiding citizens.
The prime minister further declared that none of this information had been disclosed to her in her capacity as chairman of the of the National Security Council, even though meetings of the council were held from time to time, and that these wiretapping operations extended to email and text messaging communications of people in private life, such as media practitioners and even members of the judiciary.
The following day, the prime minister disclosed in a statement to Parliament that among the people whose communications had been intercepted was none other than the country’s first citizen President George Maxwell.
Other notable citizens suffering a similar fate included the then chief justice, his wife and son, and even the comedian Rachael Price and Ato Boldon, the Olympic medallist.
There is monumental significance for all of the Caribbean islands in these revelations. One of the prices that we pay for the preservation of our democracies is the maintenance of the security services.
All democracies do this because they are painfully aware of those elements in the society, of a criminal nature and otherwise, whose aims are to disrupt the peace, order and good governance of the state.
There is a necessary blanket of secrecy thrown around these operations, because publicising the operations of security initiatives and activities will be counterproductive; and the perennial challenge for all governments is to balance the need for security services with the preservation of the constitutional safeguards.
What prime minister Persad-Bissessar disclosed in Parliament seems to suggest that the security services indulged in wiretapping operations in a manner inconsistent with due respect for the constitutional rights of the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, and this is very serious since it may have involved a breach of the supreme law of the country.
There are lessons to be learnt; for while this outrage occurred in Trinidad, it ought to remind all regional governments as protectors of their young democracies, that they should ensure “proper arrangements” are in place to discourage these kinds of roguish activity under the cover of legitimate security operations.
Those “proper arrangements” would recognise the necessity for appropriate wiretapping legislation to ensure that such covert operations take place only in certain specified circumstances which must mandate the presentation of sworn evidence for the consideration of a judge whose authority would be the only warrant for such interception of communications.
The accepted wisdom in mature democracies is that discussion of the details of national security operations in the public domain is bad and dangerous. We subscribe to this view for if drug lords and other participants in schemes designed to violently overthrow the society by subversive and terrorist activities are to be caught, then secrecy must be the order of the day.
However, the developments in our sister island should be a wake-up call. Even with the best will in the world, some overzealous behaviours may creep into these clandestine security operations to the serious detriment of the state and its citizens.
The issue is always to ensure that proper legislation is in place to safeguard the rights of the general citizenry, so that the interception of communication does not take place at the whim and fancy of the security services, and that the order of a judge is a necessary and controlling permission.
