While I don't think it is a given, moving to a cashless society in the US is a possible future. But the only way I see it happening is if the government stops subsidizing cash and pushes the costs on those who decide to use cash. The cost of printing money, storing money, disposing of money, investigating counterfeit money, investigating tax evasion from off the books transactions, etc. costs tens of billions of dollars a year. If the US Treasury started offloading those costs to banks who request cash, who would then transfer those costs to consumers, cash usage may drop significantly. Instead of offering a discount for using cash, companies may charge extra for cash transactions.
Credit card transactions are only more expensive because of credit card rewards and because the government subsidizes cash. If you remove the subsidies things my become far more even.
If Congress then changed the law so companies do not need to accept cash for transactions, a cashless society becomes even more likely. Once again, I'm not saying it is certain, just that it is possible.
I"m guessing they can't let EVERYONE work only Mon-Thurs.....they have to stagger everyone's week day off, won't they?
I would think having half of workers work Mon-Thu and the other half Tue-Fri, with more meetings on Tue-Thu, would work best in most office environments. For some roles like customer service where having half the staff take off Mon&Fri wouldn't work, they could implement an every other week 3-day weekend rotation. People may get extra PTO whenever their day off lands on a holiday, but otherwise that should be an easy problem to work out.
They were never spending $3B. They were refunding $3B worth of the taxes Amazon would have paid. Too many stupid people commenting on something they don't understand.
Try to get your facts right before calling others stupid. New York City and New York State were providing a combination of tax credits, grants, and other assistance such as shared spending for infrastructure projects. It was certainly not $3B of just tax breaks. Tax breaks certainly are preferred over grants, since less money is lost if the jobs don't materialize and less money is spent up front, but in the end it is still revenue lost for spending elsewhere.
In some Midwest town which is hurting for jobs, the argument that these Amazon jobs would be "net new" jobs is more compelling. But New York city has little problem attracting jobs; it has more problems funding infrastructure problems or offering affordable housing. The Amazon deal certainly could have been a good thing overall for New York (I originally said it just wasn't a guarantee Long Island would benefit), but the deal itself left a lot to be desired. Considering Maryland offered $6.5 billion more in incentives than Virginia at a location 20 miles away, but still lost, shows how little Amazon was using these incentives in its decision to locate their headquarters.
I've always said if Amazon wants to be really beneficial and transformational, place their HQ2 in a rust-belt city. NYC is fine, they are millions of jobs and a high cost of living. Places like Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburg, etc. need the jobs and would be very supportive to Amazon.
They just don't have the deepest pockets. Amazon's goal was never to be beneficial or transformational. It was to make more money (by saving more money in this case).
And now some other city will give them what they want - and Long Island will be out of luck on this one.
Out of luck? They were about to spend $120,000 per "new" job created, so it is far from guaranteed Long Island would have benefited. Long Island has a 3.8% unemployment rate, so I doubt it is hurting for new jobs. The New York City area is probably not hurting for businesses to locate there. Spending that $3 billion on more affordable housing would probably do far more good in attracting businesses by giving them more access to employees.
So it appears we aren't that far off on our opinions, and the difference is basically that I have less confidence in the government being able to access the personnel to ensure systems are trustworthy (regardless of open source or closed source). And I think the main reason we differ is you believe it doesn't take as significant level of expertise to do that as I do, which is basically just a judgement call. Nothing to really argue there except an agree to disagree.
Finally I'd like to repeat that the reason we're having this discussion is that I pointed out that it's the only way to resolving conflicts of interest associated with commercial actors, re-asserting control over the information stored in the systems, and ensuring the system is trustworthy, something which is as essential as it is impossible with proprietary software. You might endorse that or not.
I would like to add that private companies perform audits on other private companies of their IT systems all the time. I work at a financial services company and we go through multiple audits per month by our partners, investors, and regulators. There is nothing stopping government officials from being able to view proprietary code theoretically, although in practice it is unlikely in most cases. Just like it is unlikely for government (or private companies for that matter) to thoroughly review the code of any open source solutions they use.
But it certainly isn't impossible to have a higher level of transparency with proprietary code than your average retail user. It just depends on what they work into their contract.
People will not accept lower wages but better job security and other less tangible benefits, because they could earn top talent wages were the top wages go to less than 20% of the workforce, and the rest is treated like crap with a huge turnover? Not to mention they might already have been kicked out of it once because they were "too old"? And these businesses have the lion's share of the top people? Gee, I wonder why since the alternative ATM is zero. I'm sorry, you make absolutely no sense, you're actively contradicting yourself.
I'm not sure what is confusing you. If any worker in question cannot make top wages (because they aren't in the top 20% or whatever), sure they could be convinced to work in the public sector. But they couldn't command the top salaries because they weren't the top talent. The government can probably get plenty of ex-Google/Facebook/etc workers, but not their best and brightest. Those individuals are either still at the top tech companies, have started their own private companies, or are working for other well funded private companies.
This is a small project will less specialized people than say, making an atomic bomb, and that got done.
If the government treated any single project with the importance of the Manhattan project, I'm sure they could get the funding to gather the best and brightest and would accomplish as much as any private company could. Probably much more, since profits wouldn't be the primary motive. But that is not how the vast majority of public projects are run. In fact the Manhattan project and moon landing may be it. Today the government would most likely license private companies and contractors to do that work, since they can justify paying a private company $100 billion much easier than they can justify paying individual government employees $500k/yr.
Whether to use or abuse any AI, if any came out of this, wouldn't even be Trump's decision.
Although Trump still gives us an idea of who the US electorate is willing to put in charge of the executive branch. And Trump is the devil we know; who knows how bad it could actually get. That should give everyone reason for concern long after Trump leaves office.
Who would have thought that the only President in modern times to use direct hatred and vitriol as his core platform would engender a negative emotional response from those he attacks? It doesn't make it right to dismiss everything the President says, but it takes a particularly strong person to look past Trump's demeanor to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything he says (unless they agree with his platform, which doesn't take any strength at all).
When 90% of what someone says is hateful and ignorant garbage, anyone should be forgiven for writing off the other 10% too just for convenience sake. Most people have better things to do.
Now, since it is a Republican wanting this, the media, lib sites will condone it as "government spying". Had Obama requested this, it would be the best thing since sliced bread.
As one of those liberals who hates most of Trump's signature agendas, the only thing I dislike about this is there is no actual money here. Just a request for federal agencies to divert their existing funds into AI research. It's really a do nothing gesture. No news of any detailed reports coming out of any subcommittees like you had on AI research in the last year of the Obama presidency. No news of adding a billion in funding each year, or something like that.
There really isn't anything to hate on here, or to like, because there just isn't anything of substance there.
1. Salary isn't necessarily everything that counts. There are plenty of competent people who aren't necessarily mercenaries who will sell themselves to the highest bidder.
I must have hit a nerve there. While there are plenty of people who can command $250k in the marketplace but are perfectly happy making $125k, they are very rare. I haven't found any, but I'm only a couple decades into my career. I have found many people content with $125k who could make $150k elsewhere (one even works for me) because they like the company, team, location, etc. But the chasm between what the government tends to pay and what private industry does is far too great.
The government is filled with big fish small pond types, like many small companies. That is far different than the big fish big pond types you will find at large tech vendors.
2. You're pretending that large tech vendors actually are interested in, and in fact do invest in top talent. A quick look at the reality, however, would indicate that opposite is true; experienced people (e.g 40+) regularly gets laid off, and are replaced by younger ones who are cheaper, less experienced and usually off-shored. Hardly a recipe that is hard to beat, both from a quality and a security POV.
Large tech vendors, and large consulting firms, are not made up of 100% top talent. Probably not even 20%. They are filled with younger "worker bees" who have very high turnover. But these companies still have the lion's share of the top people in the industry.
And even the rest of that talent in the field is getting the rare technical architect, director of IT, etc. jobs at large private companies outside of the tech industry. They still aren't making their way into government for the most part.
The skills are not there, and cannot be hired, because in most cases the US government does not compete with private industry on salary. While this is theoretically a solvable problem, in practice it isn't. Even the vast majority of private companies cannot compete with large tech vendors for top talent.
This. I'm not alive at 2100, I have no kids, and I'm tired of trying to keep yours from suffering from your idiocy. Go for it. Burn the coal. Why the fuck should I give a shit?
It is generally a personal decision of what to care about in your life, so you are certainly under no obligation to care about future generations. Although not having kids doesn't make too much of a difference, unless there is no one you care about that might care about future generations. Yes most species care about their young more than other members of their species, but humans often care about non-relatives as well.
Then again I don't know how old you are, and you might start to feel the effect of these decisions in your lifetime. Arguably some of the negative effects are already here in the form of more severe weather events, and if predictions are correct it will get much worse within most of our lifetimes.
but [science] also has a duty to do the best it can to inform public policy.
Science is a tool to help find the truth. As soon as you talk about "duty to inform" then you are in the realm of politics, not science. (It can still be a good thing, but it's not science).
While you may be technically correct, that is a very pedantic argument. Just change "science" to "scientist" and his statement is just fine.
I would even argue you aren't correct at all, if you consider science to be a branch of knowledge and study, not just the set of tools used in the field. In this case science can be granted responsibilities by those who practice it, such as the duty to inform the public of field's currently most accurate understanding of the truth.
To demonstrate who is actually the brainwashed idiot, consider this: Trump has, on at least 7 occasions, acknowledged that the climate is warming, and that humans likely play a role in that.
Most climate change deniers have at least come around to making statements like the one you just made. Which is the equivalent of admitting inclement weather is approaching while a tsunami is on its way.
They generally admit the climate is warming, but deny how much, how fast, and how damaging it will be. They generally admit humans play some role, but add qualifiers such as "likely", and only admit that we play a role instead of us being the primary factor.
This allows them to sound reasonable to the uneducated but still provide them an out whenever a solution might disrupt industry or otherwise cost money.
Linear extrapolations 80 years into the future are never good science.
I didn't see any indication in the article that the researchers assumed linear growth in their predictions. Did I miss something or did you make that up?
Considering even self reported polls show about 2/3 of students cheat in high-school, expulsion is a bit dramatic. And considering the chances of getting caught cheating are so low, any significant punishment creates more unfairness than the cheating itself. Cheating as a moral failing rates somewhere around going 10 miles over the speed limit on an interstate.
There are plenty of ways to reduce cheating; many of them mentioned in this article's comments. More significant punishment is usually the worst option of reducing any unwanted behavior.
What kind of equations did you use in History? There are plenty of subjects where that kind of test just isn't possible. Even in sciences (gross anatomy comes to mind, had lots of memorization in that one).
Others have already pointed out there are much better ways to test knowledge of history than to ask what year Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
It isn't always just poor test design. Often it is poor curriculum design too. If your history test only tests an amount of knowledge you can fit on a cheat sheet, you are only asking for cramming of information (into either their brain or cheat sheet). If you really care that much about memorization, and this is actually important enough information to know long term, test randomly on any material you have covered so far that semester. Don't give an opportunity to study/cram for tests, or an opportunity to build cheat sheets.
The best college classes I had almost always had open book exams. If you needed to use the book extensively, you would never finish the test on time.
This is only true for classes which provide value to students. There are plenty of classes this doesn't apply to. I for instance would routinely cheat on my Spanish tests because two semesters of foreign language were required and I had no desire to learn a foreign language (still don't). All Spanish classes were to me were a potential drag on my grade point average and my actual interests. Cheating certainly never made anything worse; as long as I didn't get caught.
If students show genuine interest in a class, they are unlikely to cheat. And nearly any class after a student can read and do basic arithmetic, which the student shows no interest in, is of very little value to the student. They aren't going to retain the knowledge. If the teachers disagree with a student about the value of the course, it is their job to pique the student's interest not act like prison wardens forcing them to do work with the threat of poor grades.
I mean, you read the last part of TFS, but what about the rest? Did you miss this part?
"Some programs, like New York's, even analyze the voices of call recipients outside prisons to track which outsiders speak to multiple prisoners regularly."
Good point, I had forgotten about that part of the summary when I read the last paragraph. I have never called someone in prison, but if there isn't some kind of "this call is being monitored and reviewed by prison officials and other agencies..." message at the beginning of the call then I agree there is a problem. IANAL, but a quick Google search seems to confirm there is no reasonable expectation of privacy during a prison phone call, at least in Florida (the first article I found). Which is what I would expect.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't think it is a given, moving to a cashless society in the US is a possible future. But the only way I see it happening is if the government stops subsidizing cash and pushes the costs on those who decide to use cash. The cost of printing money, storing money, disposing of money, investigating counterfeit money, investigating tax evasion from off the books transactions, etc. costs tens of billions of dollars a year. If the US Treasury started offloading those costs to banks who request cash, who would then transfer those costs to consumers, cash usage may drop significantly. Instead of offering a discount for using cash, companies may charge extra for cash transactions.
Credit card transactions are only more expensive because of credit card rewards and because the government subsidizes cash. If you remove the subsidies things my become far more even.
If Congress then changed the law so companies do not need to accept cash for transactions, a cashless society becomes even more likely. Once again, I'm not saying it is certain, just that it is possible.
I"m guessing they can't let EVERYONE work only Mon-Thurs.....they have to stagger everyone's week day off, won't they?
I would think having half of workers work Mon-Thu and the other half Tue-Fri, with more meetings on Tue-Thu, would work best in most office environments. For some roles like customer service where having half the staff take off Mon&Fri wouldn't work, they could implement an every other week 3-day weekend rotation. People may get extra PTO whenever their day off lands on a holiday, but otherwise that should be an easy problem to work out.
My mistake, good call out. As you could obviously tell, I'm not familiar with the area.
They were never spending $3B. They were refunding $3B worth of the taxes Amazon would have paid. Too many stupid people commenting on something they don't understand.
Try to get your facts right before calling others stupid. New York City and New York State were providing a combination of tax credits, grants, and other assistance such as shared spending for infrastructure projects. It was certainly not $3B of just tax breaks. Tax breaks certainly are preferred over grants, since less money is lost if the jobs don't materialize and less money is spent up front, but in the end it is still revenue lost for spending elsewhere.
In some Midwest town which is hurting for jobs, the argument that these Amazon jobs would be "net new" jobs is more compelling. But New York city has little problem attracting jobs; it has more problems funding infrastructure problems or offering affordable housing. The Amazon deal certainly could have been a good thing overall for New York (I originally said it just wasn't a guarantee Long Island would benefit), but the deal itself left a lot to be desired. Considering Maryland offered $6.5 billion more in incentives than Virginia at a location 20 miles away, but still lost, shows how little Amazon was using these incentives in its decision to locate their headquarters.
I've always said if Amazon wants to be really beneficial and transformational, place their HQ2 in a rust-belt city. NYC is fine, they are millions of jobs and a high cost of living. Places like Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburg, etc. need the jobs and would be very supportive to Amazon.
They just don't have the deepest pockets. Amazon's goal was never to be beneficial or transformational. It was to make more money (by saving more money in this case).
And now some other city will give them what they want - and Long Island will be out of luck on this one.
Out of luck? They were about to spend $120,000 per "new" job created, so it is far from guaranteed Long Island would have benefited. Long Island has a 3.8% unemployment rate, so I doubt it is hurting for new jobs. The New York City area is probably not hurting for businesses to locate there. Spending that $3 billion on more affordable housing would probably do far more good in attracting businesses by giving them more access to employees.
So it appears we aren't that far off on our opinions, and the difference is basically that I have less confidence in the government being able to access the personnel to ensure systems are trustworthy (regardless of open source or closed source). And I think the main reason we differ is you believe it doesn't take as significant level of expertise to do that as I do, which is basically just a judgement call. Nothing to really argue there except an agree to disagree.
Finally I'd like to repeat that the reason we're having this discussion is that I pointed out that it's the only way to resolving conflicts of interest associated with commercial actors, re-asserting control over the information stored in the systems, and ensuring the system is trustworthy, something which is as essential as it is impossible with proprietary software. You might endorse that or not.
I would like to add that private companies perform audits on other private companies of their IT systems all the time. I work at a financial services company and we go through multiple audits per month by our partners, investors, and regulators. There is nothing stopping government officials from being able to view proprietary code theoretically, although in practice it is unlikely in most cases. Just like it is unlikely for government (or private companies for that matter) to thoroughly review the code of any open source solutions they use.
But it certainly isn't impossible to have a higher level of transparency with proprietary code than your average retail user. It just depends on what they work into their contract.
People will not accept lower wages but better job security and other less tangible benefits, because they could earn top talent wages were the top wages go to less than 20% of the workforce, and the rest is treated like crap with a huge turnover? Not to mention they might already have been kicked out of it once because they were "too old"? And these businesses have the lion's share of the top people? Gee, I wonder why since the alternative ATM is zero. I'm sorry, you make absolutely no sense, you're actively contradicting yourself.
I'm not sure what is confusing you. If any worker in question cannot make top wages (because they aren't in the top 20% or whatever), sure they could be convinced to work in the public sector. But they couldn't command the top salaries because they weren't the top talent. The government can probably get plenty of ex-Google/Facebook/etc workers, but not their best and brightest. Those individuals are either still at the top tech companies, have started their own private companies, or are working for other well funded private companies.
This is a small project will less specialized people than say, making an atomic bomb, and that got done.
If the government treated any single project with the importance of the Manhattan project, I'm sure they could get the funding to gather the best and brightest and would accomplish as much as any private company could. Probably much more, since profits wouldn't be the primary motive. But that is not how the vast majority of public projects are run. In fact the Manhattan project and moon landing may be it. Today the government would most likely license private companies and contractors to do that work, since they can justify paying a private company $100 billion much easier than they can justify paying individual government employees $500k/yr.
His approval ratings are higher than Obama.
Which says something very unfortunate about the 40% of Americans approving of his leadership.
Whether to use or abuse any AI, if any came out of this, wouldn't even be Trump's decision.
Although Trump still gives us an idea of who the US electorate is willing to put in charge of the executive branch. And Trump is the devil we know; who knows how bad it could actually get. That should give everyone reason for concern long after Trump leaves office.
Who would have thought that the only President in modern times to use direct hatred and vitriol as his core platform would engender a negative emotional response from those he attacks? It doesn't make it right to dismiss everything the President says, but it takes a particularly strong person to look past Trump's demeanor to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything he says (unless they agree with his platform, which doesn't take any strength at all).
When 90% of what someone says is hateful and ignorant garbage, anyone should be forgiven for writing off the other 10% too just for convenience sake. Most people have better things to do.
Now, since it is a Republican wanting this, the media, lib sites will condone it as "government spying".
Had Obama requested this, it would be the best thing since sliced bread.
As one of those liberals who hates most of Trump's signature agendas, the only thing I dislike about this is there is no actual money here. Just a request for federal agencies to divert their existing funds into AI research. It's really a do nothing gesture. No news of any detailed reports coming out of any subcommittees like you had on AI research in the last year of the Obama presidency. No news of adding a billion in funding each year, or something like that.
There really isn't anything to hate on here, or to like, because there just isn't anything of substance there.
1. Salary isn't necessarily everything that counts. There are plenty of competent people who aren't necessarily mercenaries who will sell themselves to the highest bidder.
I must have hit a nerve there. While there are plenty of people who can command $250k in the marketplace but are perfectly happy making $125k, they are very rare. I haven't found any, but I'm only a couple decades into my career. I have found many people content with $125k who could make $150k elsewhere (one even works for me) because they like the company, team, location, etc. But the chasm between what the government tends to pay and what private industry does is far too great.
The government is filled with big fish small pond types, like many small companies. That is far different than the big fish big pond types you will find at large tech vendors.
2. You're pretending that large tech vendors actually are interested in, and in fact do invest in top talent. A quick look at the reality, however, would indicate that opposite is true; experienced people (e.g 40+) regularly gets laid off, and are replaced by younger ones who are cheaper, less experienced and usually off-shored. Hardly a recipe that is hard to beat, both from a quality and a security POV.
Large tech vendors, and large consulting firms, are not made up of 100% top talent. Probably not even 20%. They are filled with younger "worker bees" who have very high turnover. But these companies still have the lion's share of the top people in the industry.
And even the rest of that talent in the field is getting the rare technical architect, director of IT, etc. jobs at large private companies outside of the tech industry. They still aren't making their way into government for the most part.
The skills are not there, and cannot be hired, because in most cases the US government does not compete with private industry on salary. While this is theoretically a solvable problem, in practice it isn't. Even the vast majority of private companies cannot compete with large tech vendors for top talent.
This. I'm not alive at 2100, I have no kids, and I'm tired of trying to keep yours from suffering from your idiocy. Go for it. Burn the coal. Why the fuck should I give a shit?
It is generally a personal decision of what to care about in your life, so you are certainly under no obligation to care about future generations. Although not having kids doesn't make too much of a difference, unless there is no one you care about that might care about future generations. Yes most species care about their young more than other members of their species, but humans often care about non-relatives as well.
Then again I don't know how old you are, and you might start to feel the effect of these decisions in your lifetime. Arguably some of the negative effects are already here in the form of more severe weather events, and if predictions are correct it will get much worse within most of our lifetimes.
but [science] also has a duty to do the best it can to inform public policy.
Science is a tool to help find the truth. As soon as you talk about "duty to inform" then you are in the realm of politics, not science. (It can still be a good thing, but it's not science).
While you may be technically correct, that is a very pedantic argument. Just change "science" to "scientist" and his statement is just fine.
I would even argue you aren't correct at all, if you consider science to be a branch of knowledge and study, not just the set of tools used in the field. In this case science can be granted responsibilities by those who practice it, such as the duty to inform the public of field's currently most accurate understanding of the truth.
To demonstrate who is actually the brainwashed idiot, consider this: Trump has, on at least 7 occasions, acknowledged that the climate is warming, and that humans likely play a role in that.
Most climate change deniers have at least come around to making statements like the one you just made. Which is the equivalent of admitting inclement weather is approaching while a tsunami is on its way.
They generally admit the climate is warming, but deny how much, how fast, and how damaging it will be.
They generally admit humans play some role, but add qualifiers such as "likely", and only admit that we play a role instead of us being the primary factor.
This allows them to sound reasonable to the uneducated but still provide them an out whenever a solution might disrupt industry or otherwise cost money.
Linear extrapolations 80 years into the future are never good science.
I didn't see any indication in the article that the researchers assumed linear growth in their predictions. Did I miss something or did you make that up?
So since you cheated on your Spanish test, you are now much more likely to say, "Mi papa tiene 50 anos" when you meant to say, "Mi papá tiene 50 años"
I'm not likely to say either. Google will speak it for me after I speak the English version of the statement into my phone.
If you cheat, you should be expelled. Period.
Considering even self reported polls show about 2/3 of students cheat in high-school, expulsion is a bit dramatic. And considering the chances of getting caught cheating are so low, any significant punishment creates more unfairness than the cheating itself. Cheating as a moral failing rates somewhere around going 10 miles over the speed limit on an interstate.
There are plenty of ways to reduce cheating; many of them mentioned in this article's comments. More significant punishment is usually the worst option of reducing any unwanted behavior.
What kind of equations did you use in History? There are plenty of subjects where that kind of test just isn't possible. Even in sciences (gross anatomy comes to mind, had lots of memorization in that one).
Others have already pointed out there are much better ways to test knowledge of history than to ask what year Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
It isn't always just poor test design. Often it is poor curriculum design too. If your history test only tests an amount of knowledge you can fit on a cheat sheet, you are only asking for cramming of information (into either their brain or cheat sheet). If you really care that much about memorization, and this is actually important enough information to know long term, test randomly on any material you have covered so far that semester. Don't give an opportunity to study/cram for tests, or an opportunity to build cheat sheets.
The best college classes I had almost always had open book exams. If you needed to use the book extensively, you would never finish the test on time.
Cheating just will make things worse.
This is only true for classes which provide value to students. There are plenty of classes this doesn't apply to. I for instance would routinely cheat on my Spanish tests because two semesters of foreign language were required and I had no desire to learn a foreign language (still don't). All Spanish classes were to me were a potential drag on my grade point average and my actual interests. Cheating certainly never made anything worse; as long as I didn't get caught.
If students show genuine interest in a class, they are unlikely to cheat. And nearly any class after a student can read and do basic arithmetic, which the student shows no interest in, is of very little value to the student. They aren't going to retain the knowledge. If the teachers disagree with a student about the value of the course, it is their job to pique the student's interest not act like prison wardens forcing them to do work with the threat of poor grades.
Quit being a cunt. Felons don't lost their right to get pissed, any more than you do.
Of course they can get pissed. But they cannot assault someone which is why the OP was implying would happen.
I mean, you read the last part of TFS, but what about the rest? Did you miss this part?
"Some programs, like New York's, even analyze the voices of call recipients outside prisons to track which outsiders speak to multiple prisoners regularly."
Good point, I had forgotten about that part of the summary when I read the last paragraph. I have never called someone in prison, but if there isn't some kind of "this call is being monitored and reviewed by prison officials and other agencies ..." message at the beginning of the call then I agree there is a problem. IANAL, but a quick Google search seems to confirm there is no reasonable expectation of privacy during a prison phone call, at least in Florida (the first article I found). Which is what I would expect.
I've been to prison and I'd like to see you tell me to my face that I should never have been released. We'd have ourselves a BIG time, you and me.
If you're saying he needs to be legitimately scared to tell you that to your face, you are the type of person who shouldn't have been let out.