MSJ: Probe PP for data-mining

MOVEMENT for Social Justice (MSJ) political leader David Abdulah has called on the Integrity Commission to investigate whether public money has been used to fund the activities of British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica in Trinidad.

Abdulah’s call comes on the heel of Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi’s decision to launch an investigation into whether the People’s Partnership administration hired the firm to use this country as a test site for the illegal data mining of citizens

In Parliament on Wednesday, Al-Rawi said whistle-blower testimony from the firm’s former research director Christopher Wylie pinpointed TT as the site of a data-and communication-mining test project allegedly done in 2013 under the Kamla Persad-Bissessar government.

In a release last Thursday, MSJ public relations officer Alania Bachan said Abdulah had written to the Integrity Commission on Monday “formally requesting” an investigation to determine whether any public funds were used “to hire Cambridge Analytica and/or SCL Elections or any related firm (eg Palantir, AggregateIQ) to engage in data mining or similar activity; and to further investigate if the results and/or information obtained from such activity/research were then used by any political party or officials of any party that held public office in the time frame January 1, 2013 to September 30, 2015”.

He identified the government ministries as the Ministry of National Security; the National Security Council; the Office of the Prime Minister; the Ministry of Legal Affairs; the Attorney General’s Office; the Ministry of Planning; and the Central Statistical Office.

He said the issue of data mining for political use and the violation of social media users’ privacy had become an international scandal involving these firms, including social media giant Facebook and politicians in both the US and UK. “The MSJ views this matter very seriously and looks forward to a robust and urgent investigation by the Integrity Commission and, if necessary, action taken against anyone who may have been guilty of breaking the law,” Abdulah said adding that the MSJ would also write to Al-Rawi on the status of the Data Protection Act, which was debated and passed in 2011 and assented to on June 22, 2011, but which “to our knowledge has not been fully proclaimed and implemented.”