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Ban Sale of Mini Mobiles, Says Justice Minister (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Online retail companies should ban the sale of mini mobile phones designed to be smuggled into prisons, said justice secretary David Lidington on Monday. From a report: Often marketed as "Beat the Boss phones", the tiny feature phones can be bought for around $25 to $40 online on sites including Amazon, Ebay and Gumtree. On the inside, they can change hands for up to $670. The phones, which can be as small as lipsticks, are popular with prison inmates due to their discreet size and lack of metal, which allows them to beat metal detectors. Mobile phones are banned in prisons, in part because they allow inmates to continue criminal activities while they're locked up. But around 20,000 phones and SIM cards were seized by prison guards in 2016, with mini mobiles making up around a third of these.

28 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. How about... by nightfire-unique · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... fuck off, and do your job?

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
    1. Re:How about... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're not worried about people calling home, they're worried about people calling home without paying the astronomical costs charged by prison phone operators, who bribed the government for those exclusive contracts fair and square.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:How about... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Run a cell. Mobile phones don't do end-to-end encryption for calls, they are encrypted to the cell site, but are then not encrypted past that. This is how Stingray works: you run a small cell, phones connect to it, and you record the calls that they make. Do the same in prisons. You'll then be able to get complete records of all calls made by inmates.

      For added fun, you can MITM all TLS connections over the data network and block anything that you can't MITM.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:How about... by MikeMo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ok, my wife is an ex-prison guard, and, believe me, prisoners do conduct criminal activity from their cells with their phones. It's so bad in California that correctional officers have to drive "evasion" routes when going to or leaving the prison, are required to carry a gun for self-protection, and are not allowed to wear uniforms outside the prison. The reason is that inmates manage their "peeps" outside the prison to follow, harass, blackmail and extort prison employees.

      As a placement counselor, she also dealt with lots of inbound cases of perps convicted of doing bad things for inmates. It's real, and, given conjugal visits where Mama brings in mini phones hidden in, shall we say "personal" locations, it's impossible to stop.

      The government has also tried to implement cell phone blockers on prison grounds, but this was shot down for constitutional reasons.

    4. Re:How about... by yodleboy · · Score: 2

      "You know, the 4th Amendment is a thing."
       
      I think you give that one up as soon as you go to U.S. prison. You can be searched at any time for any reason, your cell can be inspected, your communications with the outside world are subject to inspection/eavesdropping. If there was ever a place where use of stingrays was on reasonably solid ground, it would be in a prison setting. If you're worried about employee/visitor privacy, how hard would it be to have the stingray reject connections by their phones? A list of cell phone numbers and/or IMEI should do the trick and you don't even have to associate a name to the number. Anything else connecting to the stingray should be considered fair game. If an employee is using more than one phone, or refuses to provide number, that might be a bad sign.

    5. Re:How about... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Make sure your stingray is kept inside the prison, which is itself inside a huge faraday cage. You'll catch all the inmate calls, tell guards and visitors to only make calls from outside and you won't catch drivers passing by either.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    6. Re:How about... by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 2

      No, we can't. Here's why. Merriam-Webster's 1st (1st, mind you) definition for "normalize":

      transitive verb
      1 : to make conform to or reduce to a norm or standard

      So that's why we use the words we do.

      Nice try to deflect from the main point, though. Oh, also I'm not a "moron" and I do quite understand the mathematical definition of normalize but we are not talking about math, genius.

      --
      -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
    7. Re:How about... by sheramil · · Score: 2

      For added fun, you can MITM all TLS connections over the data network and block anything that you can't MITM.

      For extra added fun you can call them during the day and make their asses vibrate, assuming that's where the phones are hidden.

  2. Banning them won't work by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They'll be half that size in a couple years. And then half as small again a few years after that. Why fight a battle you already know you're going to lose?

    1. Re:Banning them won't work by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      Why keep phones out of prisons? I'd like inmates to have robust access to the outside world—the capacity to talk to others, to keep up on the news, to stay in touch with the world outside their concrete walls.

      When inmates exit prison, they have to go to a halfway house. They're so out-of-touch with reality that they need to be re-introduced to society--reintegration. That's ridiculous. Okay, maybe we don't buy you a Sega Saturn for your birthday; but you should be able to stay in contact with family, friends, the like. You should be able to keep track of politics and current events.

      Yes, I know: keeping them from somehow gaming all day while allowing access to not-gaming material is hard. We can probably get away with locking down access to 80 and 443, using a robust Web filter, and generally letting the collective game of whack-a-mole packaged into an off-the-shelf product suffice. It's not like it's hard to block Steam; they'll have to struggle to find little flash games and such.

      If you're committing criminal activities inside prison using a cell phone, you're ... I mean, you're in prison, you're identifiable, and you're organizing crime using a cell phone. You're a high risk and at risk of scrutiny, which makes criminal activity harder to conceal (this is also a good Constitutional argument: a lot of rights against search and seizure or self-incrimination make it easy to commit crimes that nobody really cares about, whereas loud and visible crimes draw attention and are harder to conceal).

      Prison is hard. On the one hand, you want people to be in prison. On the other, you want them to come out of prison capable of engaging in society. You don't want them in a nice little luxury hotel where they can relax--just penned in--and you don't want shoplifters coming out as hardened criminals with no capacity to engage with civil society.

      At this junction, we have a question: can we keep cell phones away from inmates? It's become harder, so we should ask another question: should we keep cell phones away from inmates? We may have learned things about rehabilitation and prison management which would change the answers to these questions. I've heard that some countries have less-terrible prisons and also have lower recidivism rates--Norway is bewildering and god damn I need to update my platform on criminal justice reform.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re:Banning them won't work by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why keep phones out of prisons?

      Because there is a very expensive monopolistic racket charging sky high prices for people to be able to call inmates using the official channels. The one I know of from experience charges $3 just to load money onto the account, $5 flat fee for a call, and around $15 dollars for 10-15 minute call. That's a local call to a number registered with the system on which funds are loaded (cheapest way to go in that particular jail).

      I'm sure the jail gets a kickback one way or another. If not in actual money (sharing part of the profits), then at least in the form of all of the hardware being provided by the phone service company.

      --
      Better known as 318230.
  3. Autoplay video warning next time? by sootman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    kthxbye

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  4. Re:The Real Reason cellphones are banned in prison by NettiWelho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But the real reason is the prison telephone company monopoly. That's a gravy train they do not want stopped.

    Why do they do it in countries without prison telephone monopolies?

  5. Re:Maybe prisons should think about jammers? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This. It's relatively trivial to prevent unauthorized cell phone communications out of prisons. They don't even need jammers, just a ring of femtocells that forward the traffic of whitelisted cell phones, and isolate and triangulate phones with IMEIs not on the whitelist.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  6. So, why didn't TFS mention that... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was about British prisons?

    I mean, "Justice Minister" was a pretty solid clue they weren't talking American prisons, but we'd like enough info in TFS to know where the problem is appearing, at least....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  7. Insertion sized by Dan+East · · Score: 2

    I had no idea these existed. They seem insertion-sized, if you get my drift.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  8. Legit uses... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3

    I'd honestly love something that's light, unbreakable (no glass touch screen, just plastic display), and fits in any of my pockets easily. I don't need smartphone functionality most of the time.

    As far as prison phone monopolies, I have no idea whether the British (what this article is about) have them or not.

  9. Re:"Designed to..." by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here's an idea, stop allowing stuff to be smuggled into prisons.

    Most contraband is brought in by the guards. So who is going to watch the watchers?

    Or do random sweeps for them

    So who is going to run the sweep? The guards?

    Your simplistic solutions are all based on the presumption that there are "good people" working in the prisons. Some employees may start off good, but they rarely stay that way.

    Here's a better solution: Stop locking up so many people. Find more appropriate forms of punishment, such as wearing an ankle tracker while cleaning bedpans in nursing homes. Prison is expensive and often just hardens people to a life of crime.

  10. Re:Maybe prisons should think about jammers? by rsborg · · Score: 2

    This. It's relatively trivial to prevent unauthorized cell phone communications out of prisons. They don't even need jammers, just a ring of femtocells that forward the traffic of whitelisted cell phones, and isolate and triangulate phones with IMEIs not on the whitelist.

    This!
    I mean, this sounds like a fabricated issue when a purely technological issue can be had - they control the airspace around the prison. If someone is out of that airspace/territory and is unauthorized - *you have a bigger problem*.

    Is there some legislative or regulatory restriction that prevents prisons from setting up femtocells to capture all IMEI traffic?

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  11. Re:"Designed to..." by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is about the UK, which has a per-capita incarceration rate 10-20% that of the USA. Though it was subject to the same "tough on crime" trends in the 1990s as the US, unfortunately, so the rate is 50-60% higher than it should be.

  12. Corollary: by guygo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why aren't they allowed to use jammers?

  13. Re:Maybe prisons should think about jammers? by networkzombie · · Score: 2

    They should definitely ban those tiny rock hammers.

  14. Re:The Real Reason cellphones are banned in prison by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

    plotting jail breaks

    That's it. Once Apple hears of this, there'll be a shitstorm.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  15. Beat the B.O.S.S. by nerdonamotorcycle · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, not "beat the boss". Beat the B.O.S.S., as in Bodily Orifice Security Scanner, a chair-type scanner used in U.K. prisons to find contraband smuggled up peoples' bums. https://boingboing.net/2017/02...

  16. Just when you think UK justice can't get weirder.. by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You could prevent prisoners from using cellphones in the slammer by installing in-house jammers. Or you could ban small phones in the entire country and hope that it would be easier to keep this specific technology out of an island with thousands of miles of coastline, numerous airports and a domestic capability to make devices like this in a hundred different places.

    So guess which option the periwigged idiots take?

  17. Re: "Designed to..." by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

    Trump troll/Koolaid drinker spotted.

  18. That would not be useful. by tlambert · · Score: 2

    Mobile phones by design broadcast their position all the time, with quite powerful signal and on a very specific band.

    That would not be useful.

    Who wants to monitor 100's of cell phones, all broadcasting "Help! I'm up someone's ass! Help! Help me!"?

  19. But, they are Cell Phones by RockyMountain · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not allowed in prisons?
    Then why call them cell phones?