#Keep Calm and Change Yuh Password!

The PM at a press briefing. Photo courtesy Jyoti Communications website.

Three days ago Keith Rowley had my jaw on the floor….three days later it’s still there, but for entirely different reasons.

By now you’ve heard about EmailGate, or as I like to call it: Keep Calm and Change Yuh PassWord!

Opposition Leader Keith Rowley lead another No Confidence Motion against Kamla and her Motley Crew, this time levelling allegations that were nothing short of criminal against the Prime Minister, the AG, the Minister of Labour, Works, The Kitchen, The Kitchen Sink Toute Bagai and everyone’s favourite lapdog and baggage carrier, Gallery Griffith.

According to 30+ email exchanges read out by Rowley in Parliament on Monday, the PM and AG were well aware of the implications of S34, and were so pissed off at the diligence of reporter Denyse Renne, and DPP Roger Gaspard that they were conspiring to tap the phones of the DPP’s office, offer him a position on the judiciary as a bribe, and were considering doing harm to Ms Renne.

At the centre of this latest political shitstorm seemed to be the AG…or rather, his email accounts. One appeared to be anan@gmail.com while the other was a TSTT address.

Much ado was made about whether or not a person can have an email address shorter than 6 symbols in Parliament…had any of the MPs on either side of the house deigned to use their Ipads to conduct a Google search (see what I did there?) they would have gotten the answer in quick time and spared me sighing heavily at the monstrous stupidity of the proceedings. But you see, the last three days showed me in blatant terms how little we know about technologyin this country…and further how little we know about using it to build a case.

The AG…..

Dr Rowley took a massive gamble accusing the government of conspiring against the office of the DPP and conspiring to harm a citizen of the country with just a pile of transcripts. To have pulled it off successfully what was required were digital files or actual screen shots of the e-mails so that the members of the doubting public would have irrefutable proof, create a significant hue and cry and catapult the powers into action. In Rowley being the accuser, he had to realise that the burden of proof fell on him, and like the proverbial victim in a rape case, it was he who was on trial and not the perpetrator of the act of violation….unless of course, he playing coy and allowing the PP to hang themselves with their exuberance. But, again, even that is risky, unless he holding all the trump in his hands.

Without those digital files it all boiled down to playing the blame game….yet again. It is a game the country has been caught up in for the past 3 years and it has gotten old and tired. Despite the numerous scandals and missteps this government has gotten itself embroiled in, this Motion of No Confidence had the potential to land a PM, an AG and a senior government Minister in jail had it been handled right.

Now, three days later, with Keith pointing fingers and Kamla sticking out her tongue and saying prove it, we have the country right back where it started…wondering who lying. And all of this just mere months away from a Local Government Elections and a By-Elections.

Ironically enough, it is Rowley who may be hardest hit from this, because once again the question of the type of leader he will be is raised. In fact, Kamla had a ball with that question in Parliament today..and showed us just how petty and vindictive she can be.

The further irony is that with some team work from his small bench of MPs, the Opposition could have come out looking better. Instead, with the formidable Mr Imbert missing they seemed unprepared to properly discuss and dissect the implications of an electronic paper trail of a conspiracy.

You see, while it is possible for the email accounts of 4 people to be hacked and controlled remotely….it is impossible for the owners of these email accounts to not notice the emails that are being sent to and from their accounts…unless they were never checking them. And if, as the AG admits, the TSTT account is his primary account, then surely he should have noticed all of those e-mails moving back and forth…unless they want us to believe that they don’t check email at all and Keith was controlling 4 accounts remotely and e-mailing himself all hours of the day and night through their accounts.

See, here’s my take on where these e-mails came from…and I am using myself as an example.

I have a tablet and a smart phone….I have all of my email accounts stored on both devices. If I lost a device I’d have to change the password on all of the accounts through my computer or another smart device, and hope that my files weren’t all saved to the device’s internal memory storage. If I bought a new device like say a smart phone, I’d have to make sure I wiped the old phone before selling it or giving it away….something tells me that a device from one of the persons got lost, stolen, sold or misplaced….and friends of the Opposition got their hands on it and got the information.

Given that the starring figure in all of these e-mails seems to be the AG….I’m willing to bet it is either his blackberry or tablet…..I’d faster go with phone because so many messages were sent late in the night and were one liners….the larger a device is, the more we type. We tend to keep our phones on or close to us late at nights. Also, on phonse we tend to send quick, one-line  responses.

If Stephen Williams wasn’t such a compromised Commissioner of Police, if we had a serious cyber crimes unit here, if the Integrity Commission actually functioned and if the President had the power he thinks he has….there would be an independent investigation and the first thing to be done would be to confiscate the devices of these individuals and to ask their email hosts for transcripts on the dates Rowley gave….

But this was a rape trial. Rowley accused them of fucking us over….it was up to him to prove there was unwanted penetration…and before he managed to accomplish that in Parliament…he pulled out.

Keep Calm and Change Yuh Password!

Acting With Integrity

 

The Integrity in Public Life Act will turn 13 in November of this year. Most of us view the Act and the Integrity Commission as useless. The average citizen thinks the purpose of the IC is to find out the assets of persons functioning in public life and to publish an annual list of those public officials who have transgressed the law. Indeed, the Integrity Commission has done little to dispel that public perception of its duties.

The opening sentences of the Act states that the Commission’s purpose is to provide “for public disclosure, to regulate the conduct of persons exercising public functions; to preserve and promote the integrity of public officials and institutions…” What many of us don’t know is that the Integrity Commission has real teeth. Their duties don’t just stop at publishing a list of miscreants and submitting a report to the Senate every year. Their power reaches far beyond financial disclosure.

The folks over at the Integrity Commission can scrutinise any person in public life or exercising public functions. This includes the Prime Minister, the AG, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, members of state boards, and persons working in the Public Service, Judicial and Legal Service, Police Service, Teaching service, Statutory Authorities’ Service Commission, Diplomatic Service and Advisers to the Government.

If you re-read that list slowly and digest its importance you will realise that the Integrity Commission has oversight of the activities of so many sectors of our country that if the Commission was properly staffed and working efficiently it should, theoretically, be able to root out a lot of the corruption and inefficiency prevalent in our society.

Further examination of the Act reveals that an investigation by the Integrity Commission could lead to more than just your name being published in the newspapers. There is a fine of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars attached to the offence of non-declaration of assets. As a person in public life, you also have to declare the assets and liabilities of your spouse and dependent children; and if you holding money or property in trust for another person you have to declare the trust, though not the specific details. Page 15 of the Integrity in Public Life Act has a long list of interests and must be declared. You have items such as contracts made with the state; companies or partnerships in which the person is an investor; beneficiary interest in any land; particulars relating to sources of income; and anything else that might cause conflict between private interests and public duties.

Are you wondering where I am going with this? Think Jack Warner, his spouse, their children, his assets and many affiliations that might be in conflict with his public life.

Mr Warner has been serving in public life since November 5^th, 2007. His activities as a member of the Caribbean Football Union, Concacaf and FIFA are public knowledge. Since becoming a member of government in 2010 there have been allegations and speculations hovering over Warner. We have an Integrity Commission in Trinidad and Tobago that is at least a decade old. Why did it take a report from Concacaf to unearth information that Warner has been less than forthcoming about his business interests and financial transactions dating back from 2006?

Back in November 2012 there was a local newspaper report indicating Warner was the subject of a probe by the IC. Fixin TnT’s Kirk Waithe has been at the forefront of calls for Warner to be investigated based on discrepancies with public monies.  In his complaint to the IC, Waithe pointed out funds being transferred from the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation into private accounts, and the transfers were often in the range of millions of dollars.  Millions of dollars of public monies that we still await accountability on. And mind you, these discrepancies happened under a PNM regime; not UNC or PP. So we can’t even claim that it is Warner’s cronies who might be protecting him or smoothing the way.

When questioned about the nature of the probe, Martin Farrell, the Registrar of the IC, responded saying: “The Integrity Commission is not in a position to comment on your request. As you will appreciate, having regard to the nature of its mandate under the Integrity in Public Life Act, the Commission is required to treat with all matters with the utmost confidentiality.”

Fast forward now to April, 2013, in the aftermath of the report from Concacaf’s Integrity Committee and there is still a deafening silence from the various bodies and authorities here. The last we heard from the DPP on the matter of Warner, the police had been instructed to look into whether Warner had breached Customs and Excise laws. The probe by the AG into Warner seems to have stalled. And the Integrity Commission remains as enigmatic as ever. Saying little, but alluding to an ongoing probe that has thus far yielded little satisfaction to the public.

After reading the Concacaf Report you have to ask yourself what exactly is the problem with us here that we can have so many institutions and systems in place, and have them constantly fail us. Why is investigating Warner and making him answerable to the public so difficult? Why does an Integrity Commission, enacted with so much power on paper, often seem so weak? When exactly are these bodies responsible for public oversight actually going to start earning their keep? Or are we going to have to launch a probe not just into Warner, but into the integrity of our Commissions?

We spinning top in mud in this place….Full Dotish Mode!