That man from Qormi, John Dalli, was in court last week giving us another colourful account of his conspiracy theories. No, this time it wasn’t the EU conspiracy that saw his hasty exit in disgrace from the Commission but a more local one harking back years. Not that anyone cares.
Anything this political fossil can belch out today only does credit to the people he accuses of conspiring against him.
If what he claims is true, then we can only be grateful to them for their intuition, foresight and for seeing him for what he truly was. He doesn’t see it that way, of course. His parish church is dedicated to another martyr, St Sebastian, so in his mind things are rather reversed.
In court, he tried to take a swipe at one of his nemeses, Daphne Caruana Galizia, and her ‘network of spies’. He said she published an article (it was a one-line comment by a contributor, actually) saying he had been at his granddaughter’s Holy Communion Mass. He said this amounted to psychological warfare and harassment. Really, where do you start with this man?
The reference on the blog to the Holy Communion event is hidden in a list of scores of other comments referring to Dalli’s Bahamas trip, his connections with Libya, his firing from the European Commission, a recent trip to Dubai, his former canvasser, Silvio Zammit, and Mater Dei Hospital. The list is understandably much longer than that, considering Dalli’s illustrious career.
At one point, someone said he spotted Dalli at a Holy Communion Mass in Naxxar. Given the context, this stunning, holy revelation (now this may be hard for Dalli to digest) was one of ridicule, not harassment.
Dalli is a public figure that refuses to bow out. Until he does, anything he does or says is of public interest. Nothing is taboo because every little morsel of information helps people assess the character of the men and women who, like Dalli was doing at Mater Dei, take decisions on their behalf. What politicians do in their private and public life is one and the same.
People like Dalli don’t like this scrutiny and he told the court Caruana Galizia’s network of spies should not be tolerated in a democratic society. In fact, such spy networks on the social media are strengthening our democracy, not weakening it. They just weaken the likes of Dalli, who are obsessed by their self-importance.
It is social media that is exposing racist elements in the police and the army, exposing the many gaffes of government appointees, exposing public figures as they truly are. We need more, not less, networks of spies to keep our increasingly secretive and invasive government in check.
All this comes to a background, where the government is refusing to tell how many people have had their phone, e-mail or internet hacked into by its security services. The proper term is ‘hacked’ because there is apparently no control and no accountability to anyone except to a security committee that hasn’t met for a year.
Telephone operators are legally barred from telling their customers how many of them had had their telephones tapped and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat tells us that his advisers, whose names shall remain secret, have told him that releasing that number would undermine national security.
All we know is that former criminal lawyer now National Security Minister Manuel Mallia signs the warrants for the secret service to intercept private communication. Now that should really come as a relief to all of us.
In Parliament, Mallia refused to answer successive questions by Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, who asked if tapping was taking place without authorisation, who was responsible for the system, who was the contractor, if the tapping was officially logged and what judicial oversight existed.
Mallia said he preferred to give the replies to the Security Committee on which Busuttil sits. And here lies Busuttil’s huge challenge ahead.
A year ago, at Busuttil’s behest, that same committee met to discuss why on earth were Mallia and his chief of staff present at interviews for the recruitment of new security service members. Busuttil had emerged out of that meeting convinced of the assurances given to him that the security service was free of political interference.
If we can’t control the government spying on us, we can at least spy on the government
Writing in this paper a few days later, Busuttil said the agency “has extraordinary powers to… listen in on telephone calls, e-mails, people’s internet usage, their actions and whereabouts”. And, he added ominously, the service should be subject to strict controls to ensure there is no “undue intrusion on your personal life”.
Well, the committee upon which Busuttil sits has not been meeting.
In the meantime, public sensitivity to government intrusion on personal data has increased in the wake of the Education Ministry’s legal notice, apparently suspended, giving the minister access to data on all students up to university level. Now Vodafone has said there have been thousands metadata requests in Malta.
Busuttil cannot emerge from that security committee meeting simply ‘convinced’ that all’s fine with the hacking.
Malta Today has asked him if he will be sharing the information he gets out of the committee but he was uncommitted. After the PN’s debacle over the divorce issue and the gay marriage law, Busuttil and the PN cannot afford to lose this incredible opportunity to stand up for civil liberties, those same liberties that, for various reasons, have led to a haemorrhage of votes.
Busuttil will have to give very convincing reasons if he does not come out with the very same information he asked for in Parliament after the security committee meeting. He sits on another committee that oversees the sale of passports and has promised to publish the names and nationality of all those who are buying Maltese passports if the government does not do so.
He should promise the same in this case. Unless he wishes to be seen in cohorts with a government that is an expert in backroom deals he’d better put his act together on this one. This may be a deal breaker.
Earlier this year, the same Mallia who signs the warrants for telephone tapping had been spotted eavesdropping on a meeting of Nationalist MPs in Parliament. Soon afterwards, his ministry came out with a statement declaring the “case closed” as the minister had given an explanation to the Speaker of the House. Mallia had also spoken to the PN Whip, David Agius, and, always according to the ministry, the Opposition was satisfied too.
Shamefully, there was not a whimper from the PN about that. It accuses the government of steamrolling over the country but then gives it the carpet treatment.
The PN has, to its disgrace, allowed Labour to take on the mantle of what many in Malta mistakenly call liberalism.
The protection of human and civil rights does not lie with liberalism for it is that same liberalism that led to the international scandal of extensive internet and phone surveillance by US intelligence under the watch of an ultra-liberal American President, Barack Obama.
The ‘liberal’ values that are alienating hordes of potential PN voters are actually conservative political values that look upon the government as a necessary evil, a government that needs to be challenged every step of the way, a government that should be as lean as possible, a government that does not control but is controlled by constitutional bodies that protect human rights.
The PN, for long the standard bearer of human rights on this island, has its work cut out for it and it has the best qualifications for the job. The protection of individual personal data from an overbearing government will be a good start.
Until the PN puts its act in order, we’re going to have to continue to rely on a network of spies to do the work for it to keep this Labour government in check.
If we can’t control the government spying on us, we can at least spy on the government instead.
At this stage, we need more little brothers to watch on Big Brother. What we certainly don’t need is the likes of Dalli, who gets on so well with Muscat, to tell us that it’s undemocratic.