to be followed when state officials are examining, copying, sharing, sorting through,
using, destroying and/or storing the data obtained from interceptions;
(2)

The declaration of invalidity is suspended for two years to allow Parliament to cure

the defects.”[37]
3.3.4.5.

When presented with the case for stronger protection against the

interception of lawyer – client and journalist – source information, the
Court again contented itself in respect of lawyers but attacked the
inadequacies of the protection of journalists and their sources as follows:
“[140] In my view the absence of express provisions enjoining the designated judge to examine
the justification of spying on a journalist is evidence of a failure to align RJCA with section 16(1)
rights. The absence renders RJCA in that respect, unconstitutional.”
3.4. Interception of Communications Act [Chapter 15:08] of Trinidad and Tobago
3.4.1. The Act interestingly starts off by making the bald declaration that it is ultra
vires the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago which Constitution ironically [38]
allows for the enactment of unconstitutional laws as long as there is, in the
legislation an acknowledgement of the said unconstitutionality;
3.4.2.

Like the Zimbabwean Act, this Act seeks to “provide for and about the
interception of communications, the acquisition and disclosure of data relating
to communications, the acquisition of the means by which electronic data
protected by encryption or passwords may be decrypted or accessed and other
related matters.”[39]

3.4.3. The definition of “communication” which may be intercepted is broader and
well articulated in the following terms:
“communications” includes anything comprising speech, music, sounds, visual images
or data of any description or signals between persons, between a person and a thing or
between things or for the actuation or control of any apparatus, and whether or not done
in real time; “intercept”, in relation to a communication, means listening to, monitoring,
viewing, reading or recording, by any means, such a communication in its passage over a
telecommunications network without the knowledge of the person making or receiving
the communication”

Select target paragraph3