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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.

13 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
  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 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. 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?

  4. 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
  5. 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"
  6. 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.

  7. 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
  8. 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...

  9. 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?

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

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