Dear Editor,
In the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News of August 12, Mr Sherwood Lowe suggested that the police be allowed access to “Gecom’s searchable database of registrants,” so they can “possibly use” same “to fight crime.” I remember years ago a Gecom representative came to my home during the registration drive. I asked why the need to take citizens’ fingerprints? I was assured that Gecom would hold same as confidential information not to be shared with any other agency. If Gecom follows Mr Lowe’s suggestion it would mean that Gecom lied to me and many other citizens as well. Citizens should have been told that in allowing themselves to be fingerprinted they were possibly providing evidence that could be used against them in a court of law. Not to warn citizens of this eventuality would have been both a piece of trickery and to ask citizens to possibly incriminate themselves. This would be ethically unacceptable.
There is nothing new about the coercive arm of government taking advantage of the existence of anger and fear among citizens to pursue behaviour that undermines their individual rights. In 2005 one Dennis Lynn Rader was suspected of being the BTK killer in the United States. Law enforcement requested that he allow them to take a sample of his DNA; Rader refused. Unable to collect same from Mr Rader the police sought and did obtain his daughter’s DNA from her blood which was taken when she did a pap smear and was thus able to tie him to the crime. To this day experts disagree on whether this behaviour was ethical. Even if it was legal it certainly was playing at the borders of Mr Rader’s individual rights. It calls into question whether it was ethical for the agency holding Mr Rader’s daughter’s DNA, to share same with the police. Such behaviour by the police should act as a red flag to citizens that their constitutional rights are being threatened.
The threat to citizens’ rights was also present in Orange County in the USA some years ago. Orange County was experiencing a high level of criminal activity that was said to be linked to the drug trade. Citizens demanded that the police bring this to an end and the police asked the local government to give them the right to enter homes they suspected of being drug houses without a warrant. The police argued that they needed to be able to do this since serving a warrant gives persons in the home enough time to dispose of the evidence by flushing same into the sewerage system. But the citizens rejected this request arguing that the police could use the cover of “suspect drug house” to carry out a vendetta against law-abiding citizens with whom they might have a grudge. Also the citizens argued that one’s home is one of the last places that citizens still have their personal authority intact and they were not willing to give this up.
It is useful to remember when under the cover of existing fears governments through legislation, enact policies and programmes that impinge on our individual rights and freedoms, and they don’t easily restore those freedoms when the threat has passed. After 9/11 taking advantage of the existing fears the government of the USA passed the Patriot Act which gave law enforcement sweeping powers that in various ways undermined individual rights. Now with the fear lessened civil rights groups here in the USA are in a constant fight with the government to have those lost rights and freedom restored.
In Europe and the USA due to the fear of terrorist attacks the issue of how much personal freedom citizens should be asked to give up in the interest of public safety is constantly debated. Perhaps when one looks at the extent of serious crimes in Guyana and in the light of Mr Lowe’s suggestion the time has come for Guyanese to join this discourse.
Yours faithfully,
Claudius Prince
