Slashdot Mirror
RFID Bracelets to Track Inmates in L.A. County
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to RFID Journal, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is about to launch a pilot program to track 1,800 inmates using RFID devices. If the test is successful, the technology will be deployed for the 18,000 inmates of the L.A. county jails. With this system, inmates carry a wrist bracelet which issues a signal every two seconds and is caught by RFID readers installed everywhere in the prison. Officers and staff also carry a RFID device attached to their belts. And a central server keeps track in real time of the position of all prisoners and guardians. Besides tracking locations, the system also intends to reduce violence within the jail and to avoid escapes. If this system works as its promoters think, the potential market to equip all federal, state and county jails in the U.S. exceeds $1 billion. This overview contains other details and references, including a picture of a wristwatch transmitter worn by inmates."
This has nothing to do with my rights; I am not a prisoner. It is, however, a good use of the technology, and one of the first I've heard of.
Finally, a reason for RFID to exist.
great! now i can walk straight out of my local grocery store without the inconvenience of having to stop and pay for my prison inmate!
Not a fan at all of using RFIDs for 'regular' people, but as far as inmates are concerned it sounds good to me. As long as the RFIDs are removed before they, you know, get released.
I don't like the concept of wireless inmates.
Make them out of plastic, and yellow. Then all the inmates will want to wear them!
but isn't it just slightly weird they dont know where they are now?
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
This is marked by a sudden decrease of the value of Penthouse rags while tinfoil becomes a precious metal.
This sig is false.
If so, inmates will just take them off and, well, I'll let you complete the rest of the thought.
Be prepared for the usual bullshit slippery slope arguments to follow.
OK, before you mod me down, I was talking about the page header they seem to have stolen from Groklaw.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Finally, a reason for RFID to exist.
Yes, and in other news tinfoil and microwaves have suddenly become more valuable then sharpened toothbrushes and cigarettes. Ah, what would Morgan Freeman have done?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have been thinking lately about crime and punishment. We have two reasons for sending people to prison in the first place:
(1) To punish them.
(2) To reform them.
Both of these purposes have been lost completely.
We punish the prisoners by secluding them from society, cutting them away for a period of time in proportion to the seriousness of their crime.
We reform them by teaching them new habits and skills that will help them survive beyond the prison walls without returning to crime.
What does this have to do with either? Absolutely nothing. I'd rather we spent our prison budget on working to enhance the education and reformation of the prisoners rather than keeping track of where they are at all times, something that we don't have a problem with right now.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
also i dont think many (if any) states chain inmates together anymore. i know there was controversy in s. dakota when the then (motorcyclist killing) governer reinstated 'chain gangs'.
always mosh clockwise
How long until a prisoner loses a hand trying to remove it (or someone else removing it for him?)
From TFA:
So, if you lose some weight, you could slip it off, pass it to your buddy who gets it in contact with his skin within 15 seconds, go do your crime, and get away with it.See what I've been reading.
Who will prevent the inmates from removing the wrist watch and leaving it in some location where they are supposed to be and walk around doing all things prevented.
For example, they can keep the watch in their cell to deceive the officers that they are static at one location. In reality, they might be involved in a fight, or even escaped. I think introducing RFID as wrist watch is making system more prone to errors.
The RFID tag should be embedded in something non-removable by the inmates.
I agree that using these on imates is OK, after all they are already not free.
However it's a little disturbing the guards wear them as well. While I can see some useful things coming of this it makes you wonder how long before the prox-cards that get lots of people into work also track them as well. I don't like where that trend heads.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're of the camp that believes prison is for rehabilitation, enhanced freedom could be used as an effective tool to accomplish that. Prisoners that can be tracked wherever they are in prison is a necessary requirement to grant this enhanced freedom.
On the other hand, if you think prison is punishment, look at the transmitters as yet another way to make sure everybody is accounted for, and a way to gather evidence for crimes in the building.
"inmates carry a wrist bracelet which issues a signal every two seconds"
Then that is not an RFID, it is some kind of transmitter. RFID technlogy is passive.
(Or at least they'll dislocate their thumbs to take it off before an escape.)
For security, the tag needs to be attached to their necks, or even better, their cocks.
(Roll on the worst scenarios of SciFi.)
It may be 2005, but this idea sounds more like 1984...
Using RFID to track inmates? What are they trying to do, turn our jails into prisons?
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
And what happened to the magnetic boots? Can't run a future prison without magnetic boots!
You must think in Russian.
...it helps to keep them in prison and know where they are at all times.
Now all they gotta do is rig an explosive charge to it so that it'll go off if the prisoner strays beyond the prison perimeter... ... oh wait, that was Running Man...
"Here is your Sub Zero, now, just plain Zero!"
Make them explode when they're out of range and then you've got something there! :)
Now every prisoner will have a much faster way of using the gas station - just in case they are trying to make a run for it. Don't you just hate using cash to pay for gas when the police are on your tail? Sweet...
Imagine what life will be like after WWIII...
Armies of Cloned GWB's driving SUV's w/ embeded GPS Chip implants, and inducent toxins...
post nuke holocost will be a time of controlled idealologies thanks to today's technologies.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I can't help but recall the movie Running Man when reading this... Next thing you know, the bracelets will blow your head off if you try to remove them. Now THAT's a detterent!
$1 BILLION though? Gimme a break. Put the money toward drug rehab programs and decriminalize lighter drugs. Save everyone some cash.
We need training programs to maximize the effectiveness of this program.
--
make install -not war
this article reminded me I need to make up a greasemonkey script to block all stories submitted by Roland Piquepaille
thanks
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
We need to go further.
:-)
If you read "The Diamond Age", in the future, prisoners will have "microcutters" in their bloodstream, that are location aware, and controlled by the authorities...
Prisons of the future will be unsecured buildings, with no guards. Step off the boundry of the prison, and you instantly die as the cutters explode in vessels, and you bleed out in seconds...
Just be on your best behavior not to piss off your prison mates who'll toss you over the fence that demarks the boundries of the prison for various infractions, such as stealing cigs.
works for me!
Why am I getting Harry Potter flashbacks all of a sudden?
(Seriously, get like a tablet pc or a pda that can be voice activated, "I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good" and bang, a map of the (prison) comes up, with little footsteps and scrolls showing where everybody is)
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
It wasn't so long ago the Sheriff released a bunch of convicts because they couldn't afford to keep them in jail. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20050419- 0444-ca-labudget.html
/. the server connected to the network of readers?
It wasn't so long ago (months?) that inmates were dying at a rather alarming rate in L.A. Sheriff's jails too. I wish I had a link, but it was very news-worthy on LA public radio. (KPCC covers L.A. news great) The phrase "Sheriff's excessive use of force" never quite stuck.
I wonder what the resource requirements are for a system that "tracks convicts wherever they go in real-time" claim. Presumably thousands of reader devices always on and connected to some server. Is there a database backend? Or, does it just store locations temporarily. Could you
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
First they RFID'd the prisoners. I was not a prisoner, so I did not care.
Then they RFID'd the paroles and probationers. I was not a parolee or probationer, so I did not care.
Then they RFID'd the sex offenders. I was not a sex offender, so I did not care.
Then they RFID'd the ex-felons. I was not an ex-felon, so I did not care.
Then they RFID'd everyone. There was nobody left to care about me.
Apologies to Martin Niemoeller.
Seriously, this does have utility in prisons and perhaps with high-risk parolees, probationers, and highly-likely-to-reoffend ex-cons, but society has to make some hard "dark line" decisions to make sure this doesn't become a slippery slope.
PS: Will the next version be an implant with the number 666 on it?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How delightfully shortsighted your post is. This sounds like the perfect test for a large scale RFID tracking database for every citizen in the US. Yes I'm referring to the Real ID Act. So no, it doesn't have any immediate relevance to your rights. It could. I will agree that it's in the wrong category though.
But that's just my opinion.
Why, it'll become impossible to cheat on your spouse, as she'll only need to go to an online tracking system with her mouse, type in your National ID number, and see who you are boinking.
If your political views differs from the Status Quo, yes, your government will be interested in that too! Wonderful. Orwell had no idea. At least in 1984 there were places you could go to avoid the cameras. Now, there's nowhere we can go.
Couple that with closed-circuit cameras being everywhere in public, face recognition tecnology getting better and better, and Bush slipping his henchmen in place over the years, and you have...? All non-republicans take note!!!!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
The RFID tags really aught to be implanted . . . so the prisoners can't remove them.
The Running Man
Wedlock/Deadlock
Fortress
So this is supposed to make it easier for inmates to stalk each other using RFID technology. Great plan.
Prison rape jokes - just can't get enough of them. They just get funnier every time you post them to slashdot. Especially when they're not even tangentially related to the story topic.
Jail is county operated.
It holds people accused of crimes who cannot pay bail.
It holds people convicted of minor crimes whom the judge sentences to jail time.
It may hold convicts waiting to be picked up the state for transfer to prison.
Prison is state operated and holds convicts.
Ok, so check out what's going to happen. A dude is going to chop off like 20 people's hands and toss them down laundry chutes, catapult them over fences, attach them to radio controlled cars, etc. just to simulate as if these people are escaping. Then he/she is going to escape quietly via some other route when the guards are all chasing hands. Or am I crazy?
There are thousands of parolees that go missing every year. You often hear about them after they have gone back to crime and murder someone or commit theft.
If you're going to track them, do it like every other cheesy Sci-Fi show did by using a necklace with explosives that goes off the moment they veer too far off.
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
Of course not.
It has the number 616 on it instead.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Haven't you watched The Running Man? The next step is to make their head explode if they attempt to tamper with the RFID tag!
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
People in prison have lost their liberty.
They do not have freedom. They committed some violation of rules that society has deemed it neccesary that they be locked up. Away from society. It is VERY important to public security that their whereabouts be known at all times while in prison. It is also VERY hard to do with 18,000 inmates and only a few hundred (maybe thousand) correctional officers.
This is NOT the first step on a slipperly slope. The government doesn't really care that at 1PM every day, I go take a shit. There's no way even if they DID care that they could seriously mark every citizen with an RFID and track their whereabouts, Real-ID or not. They can't even keep track of how many illegal immigrants there are!
Remember, we still do afford a certain amount of control on our government. If they DID try to monitor every citizen's whereabouts, it would be shot down by the general public even if the only reason is their taxes would go up.
Please remove the tin foil hat, because in this case, it's too damn expensive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People should learn about the technology before they post their paranoid rants: you cannot be tracked with RFID tags any more than you can be tracked with an ID card.
RFID tags need to be within about a meter max to be read (and really, they need to be closer than that). RFID tags don't allow people to bring up some sort of map and see your blinking dot moving around like the tracking system in some spy movie.
In the system they are talking about, checkpoints would keep track of a person moving through (the same way they would if they used a swipe card or something like that). It is probably not much different than the system you have at work if you work in a big office building.
The only difference between RFID tags and swipe cards is RFID tags are a lot quicker, because you don't need to swipe it through a slot.
I'm resonably sure I'll never be black....
I JEST I JEST! sheesh calm down.
So how about tracking people convicted of copyright infringement or breaking the DMCA to make sure they don't go near anything with speakers or a screen?
In the going-in-the-right-direction department:
Used to be ex-felons couldn't vote at all.
Now the can in most states after they finish parole or probation.
We're just another step closer to implementing the prison control system of the future just like they had in that sci-fi movie Fortress where the main chracter played by Christopher Lambert figures out how to escape.
616? where did that come from?
You're comparing being a slave to a willful criminal act. That's a horrible comparison; slaves in America were denied their rights almost entirely on the color of their skin - an innate condition they had no control over. A criminal willfully broke the social contract and thus had his rights rescinded; the two are entirely different things.
Criminals DO have less rights that citizens by the nature of their incarceration alone; we've been depriving prisoners of basic rights for as long as we've been incarcerating them. Putting RFID tags around their ankles is no more cruel or unusual than locking up a prisoner in a 6ft x 6ft room by themselves which still happens as regular practice.
According to your analogy, should we accord prisoners the right to privacy as in the 4th Amendment, and also freedom of assembly as in the 1st Amendment?
Prisoners are notoriously adept at using ANYTHING they can get their hands on to their advantage.
How long will it be before they figure out if they can block or hide, or swap, or modify these things in such a way as to "game" the system in some weird way that only someone with that kind of time on their hands can come up with?
A bracelet, for instance could be relatively easy to cut, or slip off, or conceal under clothing.
A collar, on the other hand is readily visible to guards, and would be more difficult to tamper with. Plus it could contain some nifty anti-defeat technology, too, like constricting if is tampered with, or if it drifts out of "range".
Think of the money we could save on new prisons, if those prisons didn't need walls! Or guards! All the parole officers who we can lay off, because parolees will be electronically monitored!
I heard on NPR the other day that historians/theologians uncovered an original section of the Bible that said "616" was the actual number of the Beast. The "666" thing was a big safu.
I think (616) is the area code to somewhere in Michigan.
Your argument requires a strong leap at the last step, also worth note the last step is the largest step and the least likley, in the original argument the steps were smaller and the last one not so big. My only worry about these is that it might make the guards complacent, or more likley cut the number of guards leading to scary new problems that will be hard to resolve with the fewer guards.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
It seems like there are so many ways to get around this...who is to say that a prisoner can't remove the bracelet, give it to somone else while he goes and knocks someone off or beats the hell out of someone? So much for reducing violence. As for tracking...given this major weakness, I'm not sure what the attraction is.
Because: if you don't have anything to hide, then why would you object to well meaning governmnet to know where you are? There might be an emergency and you might need to be contacted....imagine!
So let's go, let's start testing it in some confined, controlled environment, and then let's implement nationwide!
a small step for legislator, a huge leap for the "illuminati"
Here you go
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
This last weekend, I was robbed at gunpoint. The assailant took my wallet and my cell phone. The first thing I did after calling the police (at a land line) was call my banks to turn off my various cards. As the police officer was writing down his report, my sister on the phone with the bank discovered that someone had tried to use one of my cards 5 minutes after the robbery at a 7-11 down the street from the hold up.
The 7-11 had a video camera recording everything, and now that the cops had my description and a video surveillance image to go off of, their chances of catching the criminal are pretty high (though I was told that it was highly unlikely that I'd ever see my phone, wallet, or the IDs in the wallet ever again).
Because of modern anti-theft measures, the man who stuck a gun in my stomach is most likely going to end up in jail. The fast-acting real-time monitoring of credit card usage, the ever present video surveillance, and the fast response time of the police from my initial 911 call all are aiding to the apprehension of this guy who, all told, ended up with about $30 in cash and a phone that can never be activated again.
And yet, the more I think about it, the more I'm deeply disturbed. Yes, it was nice to know that because of our modern world, the guy didn't end up running up thousand dollar bills on my credit card. And yes, I do take comfort knowing that it's highly likely the guy will go to jail.
But at what cost? Every day we are giving up more and more privacy under the auspicious of safety, yet nobody in any position of power seems to consider that perhaps the government and corporate organizations of America shouldn't have that much access to our private lives.
I asked myself the question: What if I was on the other side of that technological dragnet? What if the government was after me because I said something that the government didn't agree with, or saw as a "threat", despite my benign intentions? What if, say, I made a remark publicly that I didn't think the current presidential administration was pursuing policies that have America's best interests in mind? What if I was in a position where people respected what I had to say, and would take it to heart? What if the administration decided to find me and silence me?
Granted, these "what ifs" are generally the bread and butter of the tin foil hat crowd, but it does make me uneasy. When I was a kid, my parents had a chip put in my dog. Now they're putting them on wrist bands of prisoners. It doesn't take a genius to come to the conclusion that eventually all prisoners will have these, then all prisoners will have these implanted, then the citizenry will have them.
I can hear someone saying "Look, if you had a chip implanted in you with your ID and bank account information on it, you would have never been mugged, and you wouldn't have to be going through the hassle of getting your IDs and life back in order right now". Then again, the guy could have just shot me and dug out my chip with a dull knife. I'm not sure.
What I am sure of is this: We still live in a pretty good country. As misguided as I think their policies are, I still think most of the current government's activities are still in the best interests of the American people. But what is the otherwise respectable "done nothing wrong" citizen supposed to do if America's power is seized from them by people who don't mind trampling on personal liberties one bit to serve their own purpose? Things like RFID tags just adds to our impotency if the time comes when decent Americans have to raise up against our own government and set things right again.
I for one am willing to lose a little more money in a robbery, or have the knowledge that the chances that the guy who robbed me gets caught is lower in exchange for the safety in knowing that if things ever get really bad, I have some options in standing up to the government.
The Internet is generally stupid
There is no slippery slope. A fundamental part of any civilized society is a social contract (Locke); if an individual in the society chooses to break that contract by comitting a crime, he/she is ostracized from the society. Over the past few hundred years we've codified this into penal codes. Granted, there are injustices in the penal code (i.e. crystallized crack is punished more harshly that powdered crack, but both have the same potency - guess which type of crack minorities have more access to), but overall it's been accepted that you give up your freedom if you break the laws of your society.
Prisoners have no right to privacy, they have no right to free assembly, they have no right to carry arms (this part at least makes sense, right?), and a bunch of other rights that we enjoy as citizens. Now, seeing as how they have no 4th amendment rights, why can't we shackle RFID tags on them? It's not cruel or painful, and it prevents prison riots/prison escapes by letting the guards know where they are. Denying prisoners fundamental rights is part of their punishment and ostracization.
Seeing as how strip searches/metal detectors are already standard practice in jails and have been for decades, I see this as perhaps one of the only USEFUL and legit applications of RFID tags.
Crying foul over non-existent rights violations makes it all the harder for people to take you seriously when actual violations occur (i.e. Guantanomo Bay, secret evidence b/c of national security, etc...).
Btw, the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy. Look it up on Google sometime.
And then link every two inmates together, so that if they ever get separated, both get fried!
That might make a good movie.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
Uhhh how is this a violation of their rights? The whole reason they are in prison is detention and punishment. Uhmm electronic observation (cameras) is already being used on most of these inmates and I don't hear you screaming about rights violations there..
Interesting, I had not heard of that being done before. Thanks for the info, the more I think about it I guess security forces are a special matter and probably a good idea to tag like this...
In the case of prision guards it would probably also help track down guards smuggling things to inmates as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well yeah, no kidding. The entire justice system is based on that. You're responding to his argument by bringing up an ENTIRELY seperate argument.
If we totally want to avoid guilty convictions, I guess we should abolish prisons then.
Most prison systems already monitor prisoners with cameras. I don't hear you complaining about that.
I fail to see how this is any different. It's only a more efficient form of electronic observation.
It's also not an online story. It tried e-mailing "daddy pants" about another non-online YRO story a few weeks back. They thought it was funny.
All RFID stories are in YRO by default. We really just need an RFID catagory. YRO should be more like human rights in a digital age.
If this system works as its promoters think, the potential market to equip all citizens in the U.S.
Edited for truth!
This is not a violation of prisoner rights, they lose many rights when convicted. They are in jail, that reality is a loss of rights. Even after release they do not have the right to own a firearm, and probably many more rights are lost just by being a convicted felon.
With prisoners being given RFID tags, it may give this technology the stigma of "RFID tags are for criminals!", and thus it might stall RFID's usage in tracking the general public as result of public outcry. Now if only they'd condemn prisoners to have Windows attached to their persons...
Yes, thanks! I'd been looking for the title. I also recommend it. Very good :) Lots of tension in the movie.
a station sends a signal, and the RFID returns a signal.
So, any one who walks by a station can be tracked.
Stations can be very small, and some stations are sensitive enough to read 10 feet away.
No technolgy in and of itself is evil, but even few minutes of thinking can turn out a myrid of ways this technology can be abused.
It's good technology, but where is the protection for citizens? what recourse do we have against abuse? how can we determine if we are being tracked?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes at last I read a comment speaking about the realID.
Is the US gonna be the biggest prison in the world?
BTW, they begin by innmates, then foreigners, and the next turn is for regular citizens...
Hey, we have cameras right by our doors too - it never occured to me they might be fore more than general monitoring and take specific video of people using badges. And of course then they can catch shoulder surfers too...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tags without batteries are powered by a transmitter in the reader, which in turn activates a transmitter in the tag. (In one common system the tag doesn't technically "transmit" but modulates an antenna which absorbs the reader energy; this makes little difference in the operation.
Tags with batteries can be read tens of meters away. Passive tags can be read tens of meters away if they are activated by a sufficiently powerful or otherwise close read signal. Tags which do not have to be read at high speed (e.g. vehicles) can be read at much greater distances everything else being equal.
With existing technology, it would be quite feasible to give everyone an implant and read their tags with great reliability as they walk past, for example, every street corner in a large city.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Random intestination!
If that's insightful, then may I ask: have you ever considered why they're there in the first place? Why is it, exactly, that our prisoner to average law abiding John/Jane Doe ratio is so high? Our country can't possibly be mass producing criminals like we do cheeseburgers, and if it is maybe there's something wrong with the system, not the people.
They also had a really great system like this in "Deadlocked; escape from zone 13", where the inmates wore a collar with an explosive device on it which went off if they crossed the perimeter. Until the imprisoned geek hooks his collar to the signal of the one worn by a beautiful girl (Nia Peeples) and escapes. Great action sequences follow. Every geek should watch it.
Rutger Hauer did a movie like that. He was a prisoner in a prison where there were two neck collars that had to be within the confines of the prison or they would explode - one on one prisoner and one on the other - and no one knew who the other one was. (Yeah, I know, dumb plot - it's a Rutger Hauer movie, guys.)
So he figured out who the other one was somehow (I forget how) and he and this female prisoner (did I mention the prison was co-ed - and allowed "cohabitation" as we say?) escaped.
Of course, they hated each other and needed to find a way to catch up to his ex-partners who could get them unhooked.
When I saw this stupid plot, I immediately said, "Obvious solution - cut off the female's head, take her collar with you. Who cares if she's good-looking?"
Obvious.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Here's the thing: If I were in prison, I'd want everyone to have tracking devices, I'd want cameras everywhere, I'd want complete surveillance. Why? Because I'd be trapped in confined quarters with a population that consisted entirely of criminals, and I'm not Jet Li.
This movie was called wedlock - I can't remember anything else about it though.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Let me tell you something. Escaping from prison is hard. People who figure out a way to escape from prison, and succeed, are very inventive and creative people. In other words, they would probably figure out that they should take that bracelet off before they make their escape.
Rutger Hauer did a movie like that. He was a prisoner in a prison where there were two neck collars that had to be within the confines of the prison or they would explode - one on one prisoner and one on the other - and no one knew who the other one was. (Yeah, I know, dumb plot - it's a Rutger Hauer movie, guys.)
Dumb, yes. The collars beeped for a good 10-15 seconds before exploding. To figure out who your 'collar-mate' is, just have one person at a time cross the line. Then go back and ask whose collar was beeping.
There was also a similar movie, 'Deadlock'.
With this system, inmates carry a wrist bracelet which issues a signal every two seconds and is caught by RFID readers installed everywhere in the prison.
I thought RFID was a passive technology that only emits a signal when reader is putting out it's field. But that statement seems to imply the bracelets themselves are transmitting (which would require a power supply) and the readers are the passive devices, simply taking what signals are beamed at it. Am I missing smething here?
Wouldn't the phrasing be:
With this system, inmates carry a wrist bracelet which is caught by RFID readers installed everywhere in the prison that emit a signal every two seconds.
I've seen several posts in this topic that make comments like "why do we need this to know where the inmates are...we already know that easily".
The reason I'm posting this reply as an AC, something I normally never do, is because I've been on the other side. I'm an ex-con. And no, I'm not kidding. I did slightly over two years in prison, and then 8 years on parole, for credit card fraud. Now you know where my experience on this subject comes from.
In anything less than a maximum security prison, you'd be amazed at how easy it is to get somewhere undetected and do something bad (usually violent) to another inmate. And it can happen in front of 50 other inmates, and I'll bet you money that no one saw a thing.
Anything that could narrow the location of a particular inmate down to a room or a particular area, quickly, automatically and with a high degree of accuracy, would be a massive improvement over current systems. And it wouldn't necessarily save the lives of just inmates. Guards are around the inmates every day.
However, I do agree with a point a couple of others have already made. If these chips are in an arm-band or something of that nature, some smart guy with a lot of time on his hands (and everyone in a prison has lots of time to think) is going to figure out how to get the arm-band off. If they're going to do it, they need to do it right. Implant the chip under the skin upon the start of the prison sentence, and remove it upon the day of release.
You can sign me "been there, done that, got the black and white stripped t-shirt too".
This is a big brother type of invasion of privacy! How can any of you support strapping RFID to a fellow human, even one who's a raping gang-banging mudering drug dealer?
What is wrong with you conservative neo-nazis!??!?
... they are only going to put RFIDs on *pallets* of prisoners.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
-Sir John Harrington
Quote: "execute all the pedophiles, murderers and rapists, problem solved."
s _publications/publications/intl_incarceration_2003 0620/intl_rates.pdf) I discovered generally suffices: "In this regard, the U.S. rate of
What about cases where the convicted are later found innocent of the crime?
As for the incarceration rate, this paper (http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/article
incarceration of 702 inmates per 100,000 population represents not only a record high,
but situates this nation as the world leader in its use of imprisonment. The continuous
rise in the prison population in the U.S. has vaulted this country ahead of our old Cold
War rival Russia to become the world's leading incarcerator.
"For comparative purposes, the U.S. now locks up its citizens at a rate 5-8 times
that of the industrialized nations to which we are most similar, Canada and western
Europe. Thus, as seen in the accompanying chart, the rate per 100,000 population is 139
in England/Wales, 116 in Canada, 91 in Germany, and 85 in France."
Furthermore, according to http://www.prisonstudies.org/ this rate is relatively similar; with "293.66 million at 1.7.2004 (U.S. Census Bureau)" and 2,131,180 held in prison/jail reaches a ratio of 726 per 100,000. If, however, jail is not counted then the ration drops to 486 as reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. So, I suppose one would have to settle on including those in jail or not.
Whether it is a result of our culture or not is not so important as how can those people be helped back into society so they wont need to commit criminal acts or feel the compunction to do so (for whatever reason they do it). I imagine the growing wealth gap certainly doesn't help some of those incarcerated, nor the heavy penalties for drug use compared to more violent acts.
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Why can't they do this to keep track of passengers waiting at airports. I'm so sick of waiting in the plane while the announcement goes out "Would Mrs X and Mr Y please go to Gate 42 where your aircraft is ready to depart". Meanwhile the passengers are off finishing their coffee and saying "Ha ha they can't depart without us because our luggage is on board".
all that's missing now is the piece that blows their hands off at the wrist when they cross the perimeter!
The sole purpose of the criminal justice system is to protect the innocent.
Through out the ages methods have ranged from an eye for an eye, to hanging thieves, to cutting off thieves' hands, to penitentiaries, to attempts at psychological reform.
However, while punishment is a METHOD of protecting the innocent from criminals, I believe that once it becomes the PURPOSE if the system that we have lost perspective. As much as anger and disgust makes me think that certain criminals DESERVE certain punishments, our rationale minds must always ask, and answer honestly "Will this prevent the further criminalization of innocent people?" If the answer is "no", then I believe that satisfying our revenge instinct and blood lust to no purpose starts to edge into the realm of criminal itself.
Likewise, "reform" shouldn't be a goal in and of itself. I think that WITHOUT reform, any system that includes the release of prisoners does NOT achieve the goal of protecting the innocent. At least, not longer then the prison sentence is for. But I also don't think that many criminals "deserve" any type of forgiveness. For more primitive societies that could not afford to feed and house themselves, much less criminals, harsh physical punishments and executions were what criminals got, and given the position of the society at the time, the society would not be in the wrong to administer their most effective punishments available. Of course mercy is desirable, so as we prosper we are able to treat even our criminals better. This is good, but I do not believe it is a matter of a criminals "right" to be treated "humanly" by a society that he or she did not treat humanly. Rights are something that ALL societies, rich or poor, are obliged to respect.
Otherwise, you're right. This doesn't help.
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
Eventually someones going to say, well, if you've had two strikes, and you're looking at jail time but its still a minor offence, lets let them walk freely in the general populace as long as they wear their bracelet under the assumption that the simple process of observing them will predispose them to making the right decisions.
They'll string up the wires and blanket the pilot city with recievers, and then extend the idea to parolee's. They're citizens, but still tainted with the association of being in prison.
Then they'll move to Molesters. No one likes them, so people won't bitch too much, and it'll be depicted as a community safety net...if they get w/in 20 feet of the perimiter of a school or daycare a little light goes off at the local PD and inside the schools admin building.
Once we're on the topic of kids, parents will think its a great idea to be able to keep track of their kids. Their just kids you know, and need extra supervision, and since they're not yet 18, they're not technically real people either.
By the time we all catch our breath, the unabomer is going to be the only nutjob who isn't tracked by these things, and, when it comes down to it, he's the one we wanted to protect ourselves from anyway.
I'm not really anti RFID....I think they're pretty cool, but I also don't like the idea of my personal positioning data being treated as carelessly as my SSN #, and the "geez, well no one likes it but there's so much positioning data out there already that the cats out of the bag and how do you regulate it" approach makes me queasy.
Night,
EK
Mozy, free online backup service
--
Goatse man..... is that you?
I think, therefore I am. I think?
No, I'd rather shoot the motherfucker
(or stab, or strangle, beat to death, whatever gets the job done), however, I wouldn't encourage the government to think that it's ok to track anyone for any amount of time. See, the government has at its disposal much more resources than a simple criminal, and they are therefore in a position to do much more harm, once they are out of control. Legitimizing such intervention is a step in that direction. Therefore stuff like an individual's privacy should be valued above temporary safety concerns.
I'm surprised no /.er sees a trend:
One does not need a great deal of imagination to see the future: when we are born, we are implanted with a bio-electronic device that carries all our identification data, as well as our money. We will not be able to do anything without that. Tinfoil hat makers, rejoice!
If you tolerate this then your children will be next.
Firstly they are guards not guardians, none of this bullshit PC talk please. Secondly this is good - if people see what RFID is used for they will be less prepared to subject their kids and the rest of society to it. Just like Edison hijacked AC power for the electric chair to give Westinghouse a bad name, we need to hijack RFID and make sure its used in all the most depraved was we can.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
OK, so this is the pilot program for the prisons. How about viewing prisons as the pilot program for the rest of society? Let's say - cities at first.
I think this may vary from country to country and may not be true universally. In many European countries the prison service is run by the state, so there is a different model from countries where prisons are run (for profit, I assume) by private companies paid by the state.
I think the 'cheap labour' aspect is a by-product of people being locked up with a lot of times on their hands, and the philosophical stance that these people should not be paid an attractive wage for the work (pennance?) they are carrying out. The question I'd ask would be "cheap for whom?" - I should imagine a cheaper form of labour for 'the state' would be to have these individuals working in legitimate jobs in private enterprises - no need to house, feed, insure, otherwise look after the labour force, and more taxes coming in. Probably results in an overall cheaper form of labour for the state if the ambition is the financially cheapest method of acquiring mail bags/ roads, etc.
Inmate 1: Sup whata want? crack? meth? shiv? Inmate 2: Eff that I need aluminum foil.
secretly implant higher powered rfd trackers in insurgents or terrorists and let them go. Then follow. Whenever you see a bunch of them together...bomb em. Worat case scenario, when word gets out, the terrorists start killing each other because of security risks of someone who has been detained.
Ok, I forget the country, but recently I heard about an Australian lady, whos luggage was searched at an airport in some country in Southeast Asia. They found some large quantity of Marijuana in her bags that she is claiming was planted there. She faces a death sentence if convicted of trafficing Marijuana, but her lawyer is hoping she will ONLY get life in prison. Anyhow, I believe the Australian government is up in arms about the whole thing. Sorry for the lack up concrete details, but I thought it was an interesting story relating the the parent.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Why not use the systems we have to protect/id our pets and inject the tag under the skin. We *could* leave the tags in for sex offenders and child molesters so that the could be identified readily if/when then are released from prison. Hell, let's just rig that explosive device to it as well which could be detonated once a perimeter is crossed, OR from a handy remote control. Hell, let's make the remote control available to the public (like a pull-switch for a fire alarm), so if anyone sees someone acting suspiciously, they could activitate the thing.
Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?
I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at http://www.primidi.com/. It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers".
Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let's talk about money. Visit BlogAds to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, May 19 2005, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ, Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net (look it up at Network Solutions). Browsing clara.net's hosting solutions, the most expensive hosting service is their Clarahost Advanced priced at £69.99 GBP. This is roughly, at the time of this writing, $130 USD. Assuming Roland Piquepaille pays for the Clarahost Advanced hosting service, he is out $130 leaving him with a maximum net profit of $650 each month. Keeping your website registered with Network Solutions cost $34.99 per year, or about $3 per month. This leaves Roland Piquepaille with $647 each month. He may pay for additional services related to his online journal, but I was unable to find any evidence of this.
I think the RFID check will create a false sense of security among guards and make escape easier. Ok so Andy Dufresne finds a way to get his bracelet off. He puts it in his bed. The guards are running through the list of prisioners for the night...Dufresne? Check!
Meanwhile, Andy crawled to freedom through five-hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to.
Actually, I was just going to point out how your chronic drug use has crippled your ability to capitalize sentences.
You can be imprisoned for months, or even years, without a trial. Under the USA-PATRIOT act, you can be imprisoned indefinately without ever being CHARGED with a crime.
The cases of Kevin Mitnick and Jose Padilla are a sobering reminder that our Constitutional right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury has become a hollow sham.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
(1) To punish them.
(2) To reform them.
As far as I'm concerned, prison is primarily to keep societal scum from harming more people. If they get rehabbed and/or punished on top of that, that's secondary.
I'd rather we spent our prison budget on working to enhance the education and reformation of the prisoners rather than keeping track of where they are at all times, something that we don't have a problem with right now.
Until such time as we manage to reform them, I'd prefer to know where they are at all times. Wouldn't you?