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US Lawmakers Propose Allowing Prisons To Jam Signals From Smuggled Cellphones (apnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Federal legislation proposed Thursday would give state prison officials the ability they have long sought to jam the signals of cellphones smuggled to inmates within their walls... The legislation could help provide a solution to a problem prison officials have said represents the top security threat to their institutions.
Corrections chiefs across the country have long argued for the ability to jam the signals, saying the phones -- smuggled into their institutions by the thousands, by visitors, errant employees, and even delivered by drone -- are dangerous because inmates use them to carry out crimes and plot violence both inside and outside prison.
Corrections chiefs across the country have long argued for the ability to jam the signals, saying the phones -- smuggled into their institutions by the thousands, by visitors, errant employees, and even delivered by drone -- are dangerous because inmates use them to carry out crimes and plot violence both inside and outside prison.
Prisons have no need for wifi or cell phone signals. Anything that isn't DOC approved should be blocked and it should have been done since this was possible. There is virtually zero downside here. Prisons are prisons.
Why not just track them or stingray them? We do it to legal citizens but not prisoners?
They should just put up their own cell tower and intercept all calls and triangulate the call and go get the phones.
23 hours a day in your cell. 1 hour of exercise.
So like you in your Momma's basement but with exercising?
Stop charging the inmates exuberant fees to call their family and the smuggling problem will likely go away.
If you ever had a collect call from someone in Jail you will know that 10-20 dollars don't take you long where a prepaid phone will,
Organized crime will always find a way to communicate via visitors , coded letters, etc
Jammers are messy. Why not just have wireless providers geofence prisons and deny service. They already have triangulation capabilities.
You are really dumb.
Just set it to vibrate.
The prison payphones charge $10/minute to whoever accepts the call. They don't want to lose those sweet sweet kickbacks.
It's too bad there's no way to block a cell phone signal without flooding the frequency range it uses! Strangely, I haven't heard Warden Faraday complain about rogue signals. I'm sure he just has the nicest inmates. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You don't deploy technology to address a people issue.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Instead they should put a custom-built tower on site that would capture the voice traffic of all phones there and do full tracking and MITM attacking on encrypted coms.
Why? A prison should serve several functions, only one of them being punishment. How about rehabilitation? Very few prisoners deserve life imprisonment, and it is in everyone's best interest to do what we can to have prisoners re-enter society as best they can when their time is up. You will not accomplish that by treating them like animals.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
jamming phones in prison also means phones are jammed outside the prison too. cell phones in prison is a problem and a way to stop them is needed but punishing those who live, work close or driving down a road beside the prison is wrong. True the distance from the prison would be limited but still...
Look, the prison has a responsibility to prevent just this situation. Let them kill the signals.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is a whole other issue. And no. Communications with loved ones, esp on first conviction, can turn ppl.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
local tower with $1/min roaming, $10 meg + $1 text each way will stop there use.
That phone will get shitty reception.
Why do prisoners get to have contact with the outside at all? Ban all phones, televisions, radios, visitors, letters, and the like from prisons. The prisons can still profit from the friends and families of the prisoners by allowing them to pay for their stays and meals.
The problem that the AC seems to state is a shortage of legal phones, thus making illegal phones more important.
There's been multiple stories here about how prisons handle phones, they charge a fortune and have a shortage of phones.
Better would be reasonable access to phones for the prisoners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I agree, but I would point out that many of the administrative staff would bring their phones in and play with them at Mainline (Mainline is the name for the dining hall in most federal prisons). So, those people will be pissed when they can no longer use them, but they aren't supposed to have them anyway. There is always the very real risk that one of us would steal the phone.
The bigger problem is that the current federal law forbids use of devices to block cell signals. Oddly, it is not illegal to have cell phone jammers, just illegal to use them. The current proposed legislation I presume is cutting out an exemption for correctional facilities.
Re How about rehabilitation?
The US has found rehabilitation does not work on superpredators.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
if you run private prisons it's not in your interest. You want them back.
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"Superpredators?" How do you even define that? If such a thing is even a valid classification, it's going to be a tiny part of the prison population. We all like to think that the prisons are full of murderers, rapists and pedophiles, but it's just not true. Drug offenses make up the largest proportion.
The term superpredators was used to keep the rest of the USA safe for years.
By keeping superpredators in prison for longer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
MOST of the cellphones in my prison were used to have phone sex without the guards listening in and for downloading pornography.
Theoretically, every minute of every phone call from inmate to the outside world is surveilled by the guards. In reality, the guards are really lazy, and they discovered they were allowed to fast forward through the dull parts, so not all of it gets listened to. Still, it's more comfortable to be able to talk to your woman while lying in bed after lights out, rather than standing in the common area on the pay phone during phone hours.
Additionally, in the feds we were given (I think) 300 minutes of phone time a month. When you're through, you're through. A cellphone lets you talk as much as you want.
Also, when I first got in, long distance was around 60 or 70 cents/minute, don't remember exactly. Later they reduced it to about 10 cents/minute. that was a huge relief for a lot of people that had good family connections who were using the full 300 minutes a month.
So, at least in my prison, not much gang-running. YMMV, of course.
I said for years this was a win-win solution. And it isn't tax-payer money at all. The prisoners would buy the phones at the commissary, just like they buy mp3 players and radios. There is a regulation right now that commissaries cannot sell inmates anything that costs over $100, so that might need to be addressed.
All calls can still be recorded and monitored. Inmates can receive incoming calls, so staff don't have to forward messages to 'please call home'. Prisons no longer have to maintain the current payphone hardware (or rather, not as much of it.) Best of all, from the prison perspective, almost all of the inmates will be carrying a locator device at all times, and probably a remotely activated microphone as well.
Is this a violation of prisoner rights? Maybe, but 80% or 90% of the inmates at my prison would have lined up for the privelege of buying one.
On the other hand, most prison staff actively hate inmates and want to make their punishment more severe. You should have seen how pissed off they were when we got mp3 players on commissary.
A radio on the waist with a red button to sound a 'body alarm'. Also if the radio hits the ground (like being dropped, or the guard trips) it sounds an alarm. Also all of the landline phones are set so that if they hit the 2 button more than twice in a row (called "hitting the deuces") it sounds an alarm.
Actually, if an inmate is caught with a cellphone, he is guaranteed to lose good time, which will extend his stay in prison. In the feds, anyway.
Not by that much, though.
The phone is the easy part. Try getting the charger up there as well.
No sig today...
Odd you should mention texting.
There are services that will provide inmates an outside telephone number and will conduct text messaging communication through the CorrLinks system (this is the inmate email messaging system in the feds (I think also in some state prison systems, but I'm not sure)). CorrLinks charges 5 cents a minute for email access and the outside service converts from text to CorrLinks and vice versa.
Yet another incredibly unthinkingly lame idea from those who don't understand technology.
Far better to put a captive cell network in the confines of the prison and capture the cells inside the compound. If it's a friendly cell, and one known to be that of a worker, who can be checked for possession at any time (like send a text that has to be replied to with a specific, changing personal code), let the call go through, maybe. Or it gets routed to the prison IT group. If it's an unknown cell, or otherwise suspicious, let the call go to /dev/null, or maybe even better yet, have it go to a random robocall center!
This is stupid, we're literally talking about ensuring we've properly walled off a small city.
The only thing stupid here is using sheer size in an ignorant attempt to dismiss the justification.
The US prison system contains 2.3 million people. That's around five times the population of the entire state of Wyoming. These people are exploited as part of a for-profit prison system, with no real expectation of rehabilitation. If they were somehow rehabilitated, they would impose a negative impact on future profits; so of course this system is built to ensure a speedy return after release.
Oh, so all those "people" behind bars are actually victims of the prison system? What kind of idiot are you? They don't randomly pluck people from the street and put them in prison simply because "profits". You earn your way in.
We've already physically segregated them from the rest of society.
Yeah, logic tends to dictate that when you're dealing with murderers, rapists, and other psychopaths. Go figure.
You keep referring to them as "people", but many of them aren't. They're twisted animals who barely deserve to be locked up in a cage and fed. Amazing how we've eradicated the death penalty on moral grounds as society defends other rights. Fact: You can kill an unborn child far easier than a convicted mass murderer.
What the hell does it matter what phone calls they make? Do you think they're all making calls to stage jail breaks? They most likely just want to talk to their families and friends, trying to keep in touch with life on the other side.
They have a regular phone system in place for that, but hey, let's just assume that a population of 100% criminals is honest and trustworthy. I'm sure that'll work out well.
Even if they did break out, what are they going to do? Get caught again shortly after? Maybe not get caught again by adjusting to society and living a low-key life within the rules. If they did the latter, would anyone really care?
Let me know how you feel when one of them breaks out and kills a loved one. Obviously you need a reminder of exactly what the worst-case scenario is here.
Oh, so all those "people" behind bars are actually victims of the prison system?
Statistically, yes. Or are you suggesting that our criminal justice system is so accurate that the 98% of cases plead out guilty without full due process are all correct?
I'm glad you trust the cops so much.
I don't trust cops as much as I trust myself to follow the damn law, which is the easy way to avoid prison. The definition of victim is rather clear, and if you truly believe that the majority of people behind bars didn't earn that trip inside, you are seriously delusional.
It's rather clear how you end up in prison, and when the other 99.99% of the human race can manage to avoid it, it's hardly a system designed to entrap people unfairly. The main way you end up finding yourself on the bad end of a plea bargain is if you fucked up enough in the first place to get arrested.
Needless to say, my sympathy wanes.
That really depends on your prison. If you just lock up people, and turn them out with the suit they came in with and a bus fare, then you're right. But if you add a library, access to education, family visits, help with psychological issues, phone calls, or the occasional furlough, you're already improving the odds of rehabilitation. Many prisons in Europe specifically aim to help prisoners adjust to a normal life, with a regimen that provides jobs or stuff to do as well as things that help (re)build necessary social skills that most of us take for granted. For instance, the Dutch Ministry for Justice explicitly states 3 goals of prison sentences: retribution (punishment), security (locking up people prevents them from committing more crimes), and prevention of recidivism by preparing prisoners for life after prison.
This doesn't end crime; recidivism remains high, though not nearly as high as in prisons without any rehabilitation program. Rehabilitation works poorly, but it does work.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Hillary has a definition of 'super predator', ask her.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...
Ken