Ticking – lessons from threats by e-mail

When I attended secondary school, mobile phones and e-mail were not yet in existence.

Bomb threats to the school were made via landline phones, from which calls were not easily traceable.

We students assumed that such threats were made by the friend or relative of a school peer who did not feel to sit an exam that day or wanted time off from classes.

Because no bombs ever exploded, "bomb scares" simply meant that we got to go home early. School authorities probably knew those phone calls were pranks, but because one cannot play with even idle threats when it comes to the safety of an entire institution, a serious or practical response was always necessary.

The recent mass evacuation of schools across TT, caused by e-mailed bomb threats, was a first for the nation. A prank to derange? Chilling precursor to a planned terrorist attack? Whatever the motivation, the words of the e-mail (part of which were: "We will come to you, with weapon, we will kill everyone... etc") were so disturbing that I shudder to imagine what was felt by each person who opened the e-mails early that morning.

National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds described the act as "abominable" (coincidentally a word which, phonetically, has a "bom" in it) – yet took issue with it being referred to by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal as an act of "terror," citing that the situation could have been generated by "an ordinary miscreant."

Even if the perpetrator happened to be merely "a miscreant," it is in no way "ordinary" to research and gather e-mail addresses of the nation’s early childhood care facilities, primary and secondary schools and send them off bright and early using Beeble, an e-mail server with an anonymising capacity that promises "private secure e-mail and encrypted cloud storage without third party access.

Contacted recently by Newsday, the online platform alleged that between the 25-28 of April its service was attacked and terrorist e-mails were sent from its domain.

As highlighted by former top cop Gary Griffith, our country’s anti-terrorism laws clearly state: “…a person commits an offence if he communicates any information which he knows or believes to be false with the intention of inducing in a person anywhere in the world a belief that a noxious substance or other noxious thing or a lethal device or a weapon of mass destruction is likely to be present, whether at the time the information is communicated or later, in any place...”

The e-mails were sent to the nation’s schools – institutions attended by some of the most vulnerable members of our society, who (to a large percentage of our population – parents) are the most precious "living commodity," and are the future of the nation: children.

Why schools? Intentionally or not, by sending the e-mails to our primary places of learning, one could say that a subtle message is being relayed: “We will teach you a lesson.”

The biggest "school" in existence is life, and we are all its students – learning incessantly (or not, as the case may be) through our personal and collective experiences, those defining moments which shape who we are and help to determine our choices, actions and course of our destiny.

What lessons do we as a nation need to learn?

Perhaps we can start by studying the nation’s motto, which we seem to have forgotten – "Together we aspire, together we achieve" – an "ideal" initially established to guide us as a collective toward wanting and achieving a better life for all – through a culture of co-operation, working together in harmony for the establishment and ongoing development of a strong and inspiring nation.

TT has failed this test.

There is no togetherness, aspiration and achievement in our political landscape, the influence of which filters down to "party faithfuls." Old and new parties struggle to gain dominion, striving to appear relevant and "for the people" while attacking each other with slander and unverified, often irresponsible accusations.

Increasingly, not-so-subtle signs point to the fact that it is time to put differences aside and heads together to develop and enact a cohesive rescue plan and map of recovery for this vulnerable nation.