Attorney General Dale Marshall has assured all law-abiding citizens that the introduction of the Interception Of Communications Bill, 2025 will not infringe on their personal privacy.
Several bills were debated during yesterday’s sitting of the House of Assembly, including the Interception Of Communications Bill; the Criminal Processing Witness Anonymity Bill; the Firearms (Amendment) Bill, 2025; the Juries Bill, 2025; and Police (Amendment) Bill, 2025, all relating to crime and law and order.
The Attorney General made it very clear that the Interception Of Communications Bill,
which was later passed, will have no bearing on people’s day-to-day communications.
“We are trying to say to the citizen that we understand the intrusive nature of what this is, but we have to give you certain guarantees.
“We have to guarantee you that only people who have a role in criminal activity can have their conversations liable to be intercepted. That’s the first thing that this Act says because you must tell the judge what is the crime that you are either detecting or looking to prevent.
“So unless the judge is satisfied that the individual whose communication you are looking to intercept is a part of a criminal activity, then he (the judge) is powerless to authorise it.
“So when people sit in air shot today and wonder, ‘So does this mean that they can come and intercept my communication?’ the answer is no . . . because unless you fall within the four corners of this Act, then you don’t have a thing to worry about,” Marshall said.
“So let me reiterate for all of the many, many thousands of Barbadians . . . who are law-abiding. They have no need to fear this bill, simply because this bill only allows for the interception of communications in an instance where an individual is involved in the criminal activity that we have outlined “. . . So the Barbadian who is law-abiding has nothing to fear because under no circumstances can the Chief Justice be able to say, ‘I giving them a warrant to intercept your communications’.”
Privileged
Marshall pointed out that even conversations between the criminal element and close associates must be destroyed once the nature of the exchange is not associated with any criminal or suspicious activity.
“It isn’t every conversation that will constitute as evidence in a criminal case . . . . The law says that those kinds of communications that are either privileged or that are irrelevant for the purposes that the warrant was obtained have to be destroyed.”
The Attorney General also justified the importance of the bill in the face of the techsavvy criminal element on the island.
“The problem we have is that the criminal element has become very sophisticated . . . . If the criminal element is using technology to its advantage, we would be foolish . . . we would be guilty of dereliction of duty if we did not ensure that the police have at [their] disposal all of the tools that [they] needed in order to keep pace with and outstrip the criminal element in terms of use of technology.”
Concerning the authorisation warrant under this Act, Marshall said each warrant would have a renewable shelf life of 120 days and must come from the highest order.
“The only individual who can authorise the interception of communications is the Chief Justice of Barbados or, if he is unavailable, such other judge as he would assign. So you have to literally
go to the highest authority.
Responsibility
“Under this Act, there is no minister who can authorise interception of communications. There is no junior functionary who can authorise . . . only the Chief Justice.
“So the bottom line is that it is against the law to intercept communications. The only exception to that rule is if the Commissioner of Police or Director General seeks and obtains a warrant from the Chief Justice or such other judge that he might assign,” the Attorney General said.
The Commissioner of Police, he added, had the responsibility for making sure progress reports were filed at the end of the warrant or, if the judge required it, during the exercise of the powers under the warrant. A final report must be submitted to the judge and an independent monitoring authority on execution.
“In addition to the judge, we have established an independent monitoring authority to be made up of three individuals . . . to be appointed by the minister at the approval of Cabinet.
“The commission is to be made up of a retired judge, a member of the civil society and another person appointed at the discretion of the minister.”
Marshall said the pool for such selection would be from the wider CARICOM region.
“Any evidence which is obtained by interception permitted by warrant is admissible as evidence in a criminal proceeding. So the matter of infringement of constitutional rights does not arise in this instance, where the issue is just interception of communication.
“As long as the evidence is garnered in this means, it is admissible.”
One of the bills in the spotlight was the Criminal Processing Witness Anonymity Bill, which focuses on witness protection.
The Attorney General said: “Witness anonymity legislation by definition will allow a witness in a case to be incapable of being identified.
“. . .We are looking to put this on a statuary regime. It applies to both Magistrates’ and High Courts. The kind of measures that can be taken include such things as admitting a video recording of the interview of the witness.
“. . . The examination of the witness may be conducted through an intermediary approved by the court . . . . The evidence may be given through use of technology such as live link so that the person is only present in court virtually and the parties to the proceedings will be able to hear, examine and cross-examine the witness.
“In an extreme case you may be able to excuse a defendant from court . . . . During the course of the trial, the court is able to prevent the use of names, addresses, contact details or other identifiable measure to make sure that the witness is not identified.
“Another common feature is the question of voice modulation, so that the individual may be in court but behind a screen, but the voice may be electronically altered so that the evidence is given but they really can’t identify who they are.” (SG)
