I Was Misrepresented � Police P.R.O

How would you feel if you got to know you are being watched by a �big brother�? In the Big Brother Africa house, cameras keep watch over house mates 24hours a day, virtually eliminating the word privacy from the dictionary. However, with increasing threat of terrorism and other crimes, tracking down petty criminals, money laundering syndicate or terrorist cell would require a certain level of intelligence gathering. This usually comes along with privacy invasion. It is for this reason that the Ghana Police Service�s announcement of tracking down persons who will use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc, to cause �fear and panic�, has been met with an uproar. The hullabaloo the statement has generated, due the possible incursions into the private lives of the citizenry has forced the Ghana Police service to come out to clarify the issue. According to Director of Public Affairs of the Police Service, DSP Cephas Arthur, he was �misrepresented� by the media in an interview he granted Joy Fm, an Accra-based radio. In a telephone interview with Adom Fm, the mouth piece of the Police Service sought to set the �records straight� by explaining that �Police service has not decided to hunt for rumour mongers. That is Joy Fm�s own way of putting the story. And I have been misrepresented�in an interview I had with them in their studios. I was there for a program but in the cause of it, I was asked about the measures put in place to alley the fear that has befallen a certain section of the general public due to messages running on social media�. ��I then explained that in spite of the fact one may have the right to freedom of speech, it is not absolute�secction 208 of the criminal offences Act, which states that, if you publish any material that would put fear into populace, which can be described as fear and alarm, then you have broken the law�. DSP Arthur recounted cautioning perpetrators of the act to desist from it because the Police service will not hesitate to deal with anyone found to have broken the law. Though he does dispute the fact that the law allows to some extent, the invasion of the privacy of the citizenry, DSP Arthur maintained that what had been attributed to him earlier was not a true reflection of the comments he earlier made. He further reiterated that the Ghana Police service would go to any length within the ambit of the law to secure the Ghanaian populace. �The concerns of the public, is the concern of the police,� he said.