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Cambridge Analytica whisteblower fears for his life in T&T

by

Peter Christopher
4 days ago
Tue Jul 30 2019
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi interacts with a member of the media after his press conference, yesterday.

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi interacts with a member of the media after his press conference, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca whistle­blow­er Christo­pher Wylie feared that he would be tar­get­ed for vi­o­lence if he came to tes­ti­fy in Trinidad and To­ba­go, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi re­vealed in a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

"Mr. Wylie's great­est con­cern in his dis­cus­sions via his at­tor­neys was for his safe­ty. He ex­press­ly stat­ed he was fear­ful for his life," said Al Rawi, while ad­dress­ing the me­dia at AGLA tow­ers.

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"He ex­press­ly stat­ed that if he at­tend­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go on this is­sue then he could very well be the sub­ject of vi­o­lence if not worse and he has asked the state in the event that that is co­or­di­nat­ed, make sure his safe­ty is catered for," said the AG, "Those were his di­rect state­ments that he fears for his life in com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go."

More wor­ry­ing­ly, the AG said the Cana­di­an based his fears based on his in­sight on the coun­try.

"Be­cause in his work ac­cord­ing to what I am di­rect­ly aware of, he saw a lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty and breach of the law which is not equal in oth­er coun­tries."

The at­tor­ney gen­er­al said the gov­ern­ment had in­tend­ed to act on the in­for­ma­tion re­vealed in Net­flix's doc­u­men­tary 'The Great Hack' and ap­proached US and UK gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials con­cern­ing the trans­fer of in­for­ma­tion as well as se­cur­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny of Wylie.

"Mr. Wylie al­ready pro­vid­ed his agree­ment to ap­pear whilst we were en­gaged with his at­tor­neys, it is to per­fect that now and it is al­so to use a sep­a­rate op­por­tu­ni­ty to gath­er his ev­i­dence Par­lia­ment to Par­lia­ment di­rect­ly," said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The whistle­blow­er, the AG said, has agreed to tes­ti­fy af­ter his safe­ty was as­sured.

Wylie made in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines af­ter he leaked doc­u­ments to the Eng­lish me­dia which de­scribe Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca use of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion ob­tained via so­cial me­dia gi­ant Face­book, which was then used to push tar­get­ed po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns at spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als.

The doc­u­men­tary high­lights that An­a­lyt­i­ca had been de­vel­op­ing and hon­ing the tac­tic for sev­er­al years in small­er coun­tries in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions.

It was said in the doc­u­men­tary, which fea­tured the Cana­di­an whistle­blow­er, that the group mas­ter­mind­ed the Do-So cam­paign which was used by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

The doc­u­men­tary claimed that the cam­paigned tar­get­ed young vot­ers in par­tic­u­lar and urged them to stay from the polls. This the film claims swayed the bal­ance of the elec­tion as young In­do-Trinida­di­an vot­ers opt­ed to vote while Afro-Trinida­di­an vot­ers chose not to cast their bal­lots.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar has de­nied they used Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca in the cam­paign, a stance which was ac­knowl­edged at the end of the doc­u­men­tary.


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