Trinidad AG: Law coming to stop prisoners’ use of internet in jail

(Trinidad Guardian): Pris­on­ers in lo­cal jails are com­mu­ni­cat­ing on the In­ter­net us­ing 4G and LTE tech­nol­o­gy, prompt­ing the Gov­ern­ment to amend the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion law soon to deal with this.

That’s ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi

Al-Rawi re­vealed this in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on a Mis­cel­la­neous pro­vi­sion bill con­cern­ing mea­sures to pro­tect se­cu­ri­ty sec­tor work­ers – from po­lice, pris­ons and im­mi­gra­tion to Cus­toms of­fi­cials – as well as halt ac­tiv­i­ties by, and weed out cor­rupt of­fi­cers.

Bill pro­vi­sions in­clude crim­i­nal­is­ing “tip-offs” which Al-Rawi said was giv­ing an ad­van­tage to crim­i­nal em­pires.

He said pris­on­ers’ use of high-lev­el tech­nol­o­gy was pre­sent­ing “sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties” in jails. He said he’ll al­so be bring­ing law to in­tro­duce a unique ID num­ber and a bio-met­ric sys­tem like the Unit­ed States So­cial Ser­vices sys­tem. He said this would elim­i­nate fraud.

Al-Rawi said he’d con­sult­ed the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on pos­si­ble law to pre­vent po­lice from fram­ing peo­ple. Al-Rawi said dur­ing Bail bill de­bate – when “frame­up” con­cerns arose – the Prime Min­is­ter in­struct­ed him to ex­am­ine such law. But he said the DPP urged him against hav­ing a statu­to­ry of­fence of fram­ing and ad­vised re­liance on com­mon law: mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice and waste­ful em­ploy­ment of po­lice time.

Al­so yes­ter­day, UNC sen­a­tor Tahar­qa Obi­ka apol­o­gised to the Sen­ate for his be­hav­iour there last week. The out­burst got him evict­ed. Obi­ka had sparred loud­ly with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young dur­ing the de­bate, with each mak­ing ac­cu­sa­tions against the oth­er. Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent Nigel Fre­itas or­dered se­cu­ri­ty to re­move Obi­ka. Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo lat­er de­clared Obi­ka had brought the Sen­ate in­to dis­re­pute and ruled he must apol­o­gise.

Yes­ter­day, Obi­ka told Sen­a­tors, “When it comes to my ac­tion in ques­tion, to all who have been of­fend­ed in­clud­ing Madame Pres­i­dent, Mr Vice Pres­i­dent, all mem­bers of the Sen­ate and the peo­ple of my beloved na­tion, I of­fer an un­re­served and sin­cere apol­o­gy and a com­mit­ment to up­hold the sanc­ti­ty that is the Sen­ate in ad­her­ence to my oath.”

His apol­o­gy was greet­ed with desk-thump­ing ap­proval from In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors.