King on ethics: Who will guard the guards?

Psychological evaluation for persons seeking to enter various jobs within the public service may become a serious consideration going forward.

Minister of Creative Economy, Culture and Sports John King made the suggestion that individuals entering posts where handling of sensitive data was necessary should be required to be evaluated by a psychologist. 

“You cannot vouch for whoever comes into civil service – police force, customs, unless you are going to be having psychological testing on every single person that comes into that space and that at this particular point is not part and parcel of what we do, but it may be something we need to look at going forward. Because the persons who are going to be dealing and treating to that data also have to be persons of ethics, persons of good standing, because even if you put all the protections in place, the person who has access to it, still has the access to do with it whatever they want at any particular point in time and so therefore when we talk about getting the protections in place, we also have to ask the question ‘who will guard the guards?’,” he stated.

At the time, the MP for St. Philip West was speaking in the Lower House during the debate on the Data Protection Bill 2019.

Speaking on the importance of protecting data in the music industry, the former calypsonian highlighted that without the adequate security, recorded music could be dispersed widely without authorisation. (JMB)