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Running a Website from Your Prison Cell
Eh-Wire writes "Although prisoners Internet access is highly restricted, this hasn't prevented many inmates from getting around the restrictions with the judicious use of phone and snail-mail privileges to network with friends, relatives, activists, and associates to provide content to their websites. Some use their websites to badger witnesses and prosecuters, while others plead their case or phish for pen-pals. Some have successfully challenged their convictions through their websites, which complicates efforts by authorities to silence them. Websites domiciled outside of the respective jurisdictions further complicate the issue. Yahoo News has additional commentary on this controversial subject."
Seriously. I mean, Martha Stewart prepared to appear in her very own TV show from her cell didnt she?
Keith Maydak in for a telephone scam is here.
... thanks, google:)
Juan Melendez is here
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
If you're in prison, you've been convicted of a felony. Felons have no right to vote. Once you've been convicted of a felony, you're stripped of many of your rights for the rest of your life.
He did. And here's the thief.
Have to post AC because I actually work for a Corrections Department in IT and I don't think it would be proper to do otherwise.
Your assumptions are poor.
They shouldn't be allowed access because they are criminals.
I'm a very liberal fellow. But after working at a state correction department for several years now my few on inmate is anything but liberal.
You give these people gum and they'll short a circuit with the wraper. You give them a floppy disk and they'll open a master lock (that's not a joke, the metalic part can very easily be made to open locks).
When they are in prison they shouldn't be allowed access to the internet because they are criminals and they would abuse it. It's all nice to be Mr. Compasion until you realize that the reality is that anything you give them is abused. Over and over.
Safety? How about inmates looking up how to break the system? Cheat the system. Hacks. What is going on in other prisons. You know how quickly disorder can occur. Imagine an inmate looking at a gang site. Gangs are *huge* issues in prisons. Gagns are all over prisons.
Order? How about inmates googling information on other inmates. Really, safety and order are basically the same thing to a prison. Not sure why you listed them seperately.
Hell, it's bad enough keeping them off our networks. They aren't allowed. But you would be *shocked* to see what inmates can think of. Not everyone in jail is an idiot, and they have a lot of times on their hand. I've seen work MaCgyver would be proud of getting stolen parts onto the network.
sorry - wrong.
you only lose your right to vote while you serve your sentence.
right to own a gun - that varies by crime.
non-violent crime, people normally can own arms after serving out their sentence.
violent crime? no way, bub.
I've read some stupid things on slashdot (and I've been doing it since the beginning) but that statement ranks in my "top 5 all-time stupid statements. Congratulations.
Obviously, you never had Mike Smith take you out back, behind the gym, behind the dumpsters, and make you pay for every IQ point god gave you. And he never gave you the lollypop he promised.
Seriously, I was not joking with the original statement. Schools in ghettos suck. Between the drug dealers selling, gangs trying to offer you "protection" and bigger kids wanting to beat you up to impress the skank of the week, it ain't that different than prision. And the food sucked too.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
No in many states you lose your right to vote forever. In either case, by commiting a felony, you are essencially excluding yourself from the social contract by which you are afforded any rights at all (by ignoring the rights of others). Felons don't believe in your right to property/life/free express, etc. why should you agree to theirs? Certainly there may be some examples of felons who are reformed, but their restoration of rights is and should be at the largess of society at large.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They most certainly do NOT lose the right to free speech. They might have their speech curtailed only for the duration of their incarceration, but it is ILLEGAL to curtail their free speech after release. You might be able to disallow them to vote, you might be able to tell them who they can be around, but you can NOT tell them what they can say. That would be a blatant 1st Amendment violation and any sane lawyer would jump on that shit in two seconds, because it's a guaranteed win.
All these people spewing this vitriolic demonization, such as "oh, they're prisoners, they have no rights, blah blah blah" had better hope they're never wrongfully convicted of a felony, for one reason. They would then be the very same thing they once targeted, and then would truly be deserving of no rights, as a sort of poetic justice. It's one thing to argue for restrictions in behavior - that's the entire definition of incarceration as punishment in today's society. But to say "these people have NO rights, lock them up and throw away the key, they are worthless scum and can never be rehabilitated, they are all 100% guilty" is unAmerican and fascistic.
I spent 2 years in prison for a crime I did not commit, and let me tell you, this farcial idea that prison is some kind of 'vacation' is a crock of garbage. I am a computer guy, one of you, so let me set you guys straight, because I was naive myself too... prison was something I had no clue what it was, except these silly pictures on tv. Prison is a psychological, physical hell on earth.
1. There is no private room ever ~ I was housed with a big black homosexual thug who kept his punk roommate in there all the time. When I begged to be moved, the guards laughed at me. I wrote statement after statement because my life was seriously in danger. I spent six months of shear terror with this psycho. WHen he finally went home after a 20 year sentence, guess what, they moved another black homosexual punk thug into my room, and it was hell all over again. Really thou you are lucky to have a room, more often than not you are packed like racks in a dormitory bed to bed with eighty people who are noisy, nutcases of a sixth grade level and dangerous as all get out.
2. Their is air conditioning in some places, but in others, there is none. In the summer time you are trapped in a steel metal building that reaches 110 degrees. You are forced to stay dressed 'inspection ready', which is absurb, and the humidity is insane. Do you know what its like inside a car when it rains with no airconditioner, int he summer time? Yeah.
3. Near perfect security. No. I saw many people stabbed, I saw guards beat people to death, where do you get this? You are in the most dangerous place on earth.
4. No high speed internet. At all. Some computer access, but only too look up case law, and you only get a marginal crack at that 1 hour a week.
5. Guranteed meals. These were total puke. I couldn't live off them. If my parents hadn't sent me $100 a month to buy the junk food they sold on the store, I would of starved to death for certain. There is nothing, nothing, nothing nutritious about them. Are you insane?
6. Real world. Let me tell you, we got one hour outside ever day maybe, in a little cage. I would go out there, and stare through the fence and cry, I was so homesick. Every day I would be out there, staring at the pine trees, wishing I could just touch them. Trying to hear myself think again, from the noise. The constant noise. Made you go insane. Free cable tv my butt. That thing drove you mad. And you didn't watch it, because you'd be sitting in a dangerous area.
I made a little harddrive out of paper and placed it on my shelf, to know my webserver was out there still running on a shared server gave me some home. No, it was not serving some scam or trying to get me out. You can't run a scam from inside prison, you are doing everythign you can do to survive. No, my webserve served my poetry, and my graphics, and all my dreams to the world still before the POLICE STATE kidnapped me and threw me into this HELL.
How many of you have seen Star Wars Episode II, where the Genga Fett has given his dna to be used in a clone army on the cloning planet. There is a scene where all these clone Fetts are being raised and trained, elbo to elbo, as far as the eye can see, in some kind of twisted human warehouse where their entire reality is controlled. That is what the cafeteria looked like. The stress of being packed so close together... its not human... its not human. It causes stress, it breeds violence, and ignorance and stupidity.
Get out of America before smash through your door, put you in front of a panel of conservative jurors with a joke for a public defandant who does not care if you win or lose. I had a paid lawyer. What did it matter to him, he got his money up front, they want you to lose, it perpetuates their system... that there are criminals and therefore that justifies prisons, courts, laws, and so on. Its just a way to project power and control your behavior by internalizing thier rules in you.
Read LOCKDOWN AMERICA by Christian Parenti.. or any of his other books
Fine.
Here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pji96.htm, a reference backing up that 15% figure: Note how 11% of american felons are incarcerated for mere drug possession and a few percent for various "public order" offences (page 4) including "obstruction of justice" (i.e. not cooperating with the police state goons), it's safe to say I would probably regard about 15% of the lawful incarcerations in america as unjust because the laws themselves are wrong. Since felons lose voting rights in america, your corporate-socialist government just uses that to make sure those who would vote them the hell out can't vote.
Also, I suspect you're white and upper middle class, if your peers you mention only got probation - relative severity of judgements in drug-related cases in america are notoriously racist. I don't think you have any idea of how evil america has become, so get a clue or go fuck yourself, you protofascist pig.
In fact, as another interesting AC post linked to, in 1996 at least, most people were in jail for less severe crimes than selling drugs, if you gauge by severity of punishment imposed on those committing the crime. Trafficking in drugs is 9.2% of total incarcerations, all violent offences are only 23.3% of total. The total of more minor stuff like robbery, traffic offences, drug possession, etc (all of which (and along with some of the violent offences!) are generally less severely punished than selling drugs...) easily exceeds 9.2%...
10 years for adultery?! In the USA?!!
That's total, absolute fucking bullshit.
Amnesty International has NOT fucking declared US prisons the worst in the world. If you believe that, you're off in some anti-american fairy land.
This jackass is just making up stories, and there's no reason to believe there's any grain of truth in it.
and someone slap the grandparent with a trout. I'm sick of that rhetoric. Yes you're right (some) criminals have ignored the rights of others, and perhaps they don't "deserve" rights. But our society is not based on the notion that rights are something you "deserve." I'm not talking about the right to drive or something (which is a privilege in US law anyway) but the right to vote, which is a fundamental component of participatory democracy. The theory of government that the right to vote is based on falls apart if you assume you can take it away like that (forever). The universal right to vote is not something you "earn" but rather something that legitimizes the very notion of this government as being a government of the people. It is not a question of whether this or that person "deserves" to be considered part of the society; it is a question of what kind of society do we have if we allow the state to usurp the notion of participatory government for those people who broke a rule. It cuts to the legitimacy of the rules themselves.
No, you're wrong.
t ml
From here: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/ulk/amlock.html Percent of federal prisoner population incarcerated for nonviolent crimes: 89
Percent of new admissions to federal prisons that are for nonviolent crimes: 94
Percent of state prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1979: 6
Percent of state prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1991: 21
Percent of Federal prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1979: 25
Percent of Federal prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1991: 58
And on drug incarcerations: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm
Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constituted the largest group of Federal inmates (55%) in 2001, down from 60% in 1995
And finally, on how Amsterdam has largely eliminated its drug problems through decriminalization http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/reinarman.califano.h
Go check some facts before you spout off your opinion as gospel.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It doesn't even require that. Look at the drug laws . Once drugs is found on/in your property, you can lose that property. It doesn't require being accused of a crime and it doesn't require a trial.
There have been cases where people have purchased vehicles, been pulled over, and the cops have found drugs in the vehicle. Law enforcement has then seized the vehicle.
Quick question: Imagine your vehicle right now. Is there a trace of cocaine under the hubcaps? How about an old joint in the crevice of the back seat? Some meth hidden before the air filter?
How these laws ever survived constitutional challenges puzzles me.