This is sheer slackness

Aug 09, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

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For a very long time I can remember people talking about being careful about what one would say on the telephone. I had been around when the telephone was a huge heavy object and the cable was a heavy black cord.
Of course there were not too many telephones then, but as time went by and technology improved, the telephone changed. But in my book it was still a relatively safe way to communicate. Naive me believed that unless the house had an extension, which was also a rarity, then the conversation would only be between the two people involved.
It never crossed my mind that the people at the exchange could patch in until much later. By then the telephone was all but commonplace. Then came the day when Enrico Woolford walked into Desmond Hoyte’s office and informed him about a conversation he had. Someone had actually listened into that conversation and could have repeated what Mr Hoyte said.

But that was child’s play compared to what happened in the later years. One day I received a compact disc with a series of conversations involving many people, among them the then Police Commissioner, the then army chief, a lawyer and things like that. Since then I recognized that someone had isolated the Police Commissioner’s phone and was able to record his conversations.
Then in December 2002 the police arrested Roger Khan and two others and reported that they had seized a piece of equipment that could monitor cell phone calls. There was a lot of talk about how this piece of equipment worked. Some said that it could triangulate and link the listener to the location of the cellular phone that was being monitored.
Up comes the Robert Simels trial and all of a sudden this piece of equipment took on a new meaning. The United States authorities reported seizing a piece of spy equipment that could monitor cellular phone calls. Immediately I remembered the piece of equipment that the local police had seized.
This is where the confusion started. At the Simels trial, the word was that the company that sells these pieces of equipment sold one to the Guyana Government in 2003, but no one listened. People began to doubt that the police had anything. This forced the embattled Police Commissioner to trot out the things that his ranks had seized.

I am not concerned that the police had the equipment and that they had decided to keep it. I had no problem that they had the capability to monitor telephone calls, even if some of those calls were mine. I am the kind of person who believes that I should not worry about that which I cannot control.
What is bothering me is that having seized the equipment the police never made any effort to trace its origin. I know a few people went on the internet and learnt a lot about the thing, but no one sought to find out how the thing got here.
It must be illegal for someone to have such a piece of equipment in Guyana, but there was never any prosecution. Perhaps the police were only concerned with having it. It is this attitude that allowed Mr Khan to procure another and he listened to calls with amazing ease. Perhaps the police were so naive that they did not expect him to get another.
We banned Movado for slackness. Well there is a lot of slackness here.
We know that one of the telephones monitored belonged to Robert Corbin and we know that some of his conversations were recorded. The laptop that the police seized must have had recorded telephone conversations. Surely, the authorities must know about them and probably listened to some of them. Of what use was that information?

I still expect the police, better late than never, to go after the paper trail of the equipment that they seized in 2002. The thing might have been here long before some of them occupied the offices they now hold. Police Commissioner Henry Greene said that he cannot speak for what happened before his time in the seat.
I wish to advise him that some people actually dig into crimes that were committed before they were born. If my predecessor was lax then it is my duty to correct the deficiency. It must be the same with the police.
If Mr Khan could have got the equipment, then official sources could also get them, and it would be surprising if the government through its law enforcement agencies is not listening into conversations, although there is some illegality.
That being the case, it is a wonder that the police have not been able to nab some criminals at the scene of crimes by virtue of fortuitous eavesdropping. It is also surprising that there are not even more people charged with treason and other such crimes.
And for the records, I am surprised that there is so much brouhaha over what Simels and Vaughn have said. Some of the things they have told the American court were not true. Logic and legal principles dictate that if one aspect is untrue then the court has a right to deem everything untrue.
Soldiers fetching beheaded bodies from the front of Buxton to the back? Come now Mr Simels.

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