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Cellphones Crime Government United States

US Lawmakers Propose Allowing Prisons To Jam Signals From Smuggled Cellphones (apnews.com) 202

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.

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US Lawmakers Propose Allowing Prisons To Jam Signals From Smuggled Cellphones

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:45PM (#58362354)

    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.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:49PM (#58362380)

      This is actually a terrible idea, but it takes the perspective of having been a felony inmate for a multiple-year bid.

      What really happens with prisons is that there's a financial incentive to encourage recidivism. This means providing only enough services to receive state and federal money, but not enough to actually lower the recidivism far enough to put the prisons out of business.

      If it weren't for an illegal cell phone, I would have been unable to keep my finances squared away and get out with a solid base of support, ready to work and meet my obligations--because I'd been meeting them all along. I experienced first-hand the difference that effective communication makes to staying out of the system: it's of paramount importance.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Before cell phones there were letters. Seemed to work fine. Also, there are approved phones available in every prison. I see no need for a prisoner to have a way to bypass prison restrictions on communication. In fact, I see a lot of downsides to it.

        But, congratulations if you got your life together.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:32PM (#58362558)

          Says the guy whose never interacted with the system. Lawyers will advise you to take care of your finances before incarceration because you generally can't do it while incarcerated. The explicitly prevent you from doing so. For those who might have child support or other legal obligations they don't disapear just because you have been incarcerated. When you don't pay that child support they will take away your passport and your drivers license which then makes it even more difficult to get a job. Not to mention most employers won't hire an ex-con to begin with. No. The system is designed to ensure the existence of an underclass for the benefit of a few. It's called the prison industrial complex. Slavery was not entirely abolished. There is an exception for prisoners and some states even rent out there prison labor. Until fairly recently that was the solution to the problem created by abolishing general slavery and unlike the prior system the new system didn't protect the prisoners. Those who worked the prisoners didn't care if they died so they'd overwork the prisoners. Unlike in the old system where a slave owner had an interest in that slave continuing to produce the rental of the prison population had no incentive to treat the prisoners adequately.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )

            You have been isolated from the rest of society because of your problematic behaviour and isolated to a controlled environment the purpose of which should be you rehabilitation. That isolation includes communications, you should not be able to communicate with anyone without their prior approval and the approval of correctional services and those communications should be monitored to ensure rehabilitation is occurring. You are in, what is meant to be, a school for delinquent adults, where you will be treate

        • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2019 @04:29PM (#58362808)

          A prison unit with 75 to 150 inmates will have maybe 5 phones available. Usually at any given time 1 to 3 of those phones will be damaged and repairs might take a month or two to get authorization because it's not a priority. Then you have the fact that inmates can't just use those phones whenever they want, they are given blocks of time during the day/evening that the phones are turned on. You might have phones available from 1pm until 8pm and everyone has to use the very few phones available during that time. Prisons have an internal inmate hierarchy and if you are way down the list the prisoners running the show may or may not let you use the phone.

          When or if you do get to use the phone you better hope the person you are trying to call will be in their office and available to talk to you. If not there is no system for them to call you back on, those phones are outgoing calls only. You can't do many of those things through the mail because it would take a week to ask a question and get an answer, then your follow up question based on the first reply will take another week and cost money for postage. Friends can't handle your private business for you even if they wanted to. Most of the time family can't unless it's your spouse or you have given permission legally for another person to take care of things for you. That is pretty complicated and not free in any way.

          Being in prison is the punishment. You are locked up for X months or years and can't leave. You are told when to go to bed and get up. You don't get to decide what you eat for your meals. You don't get to make any real decisions about your day to day life during the time you are imprisoned. That is the punishment handed down by the courts.

          Prisoners should have access to prison installed land line phones when they need them to handle personal business. It should be monitored and recorded just like all communications in and out of the prison unless it's with a lawyer. But they should be able to handle their financial obligations and take care of the things they need to keep up on in order to have a chance at springing back to a normal crime free life after they are released. Anything else should qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. It's setting them up for failure and that is the opposite of what temporary incarceration is for. Also once a person serves their time, including parole, they should not have to tell potential employees or anyone else they were convicted of a crime. If they have paid their debt to society for their past criminal activity it shouldn't follow them around.

        • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @06:19PM (#58363264)

          It depends on country, but in the US it's common practice for prisons to charge seriously excessive prices for even those basic services. Phone calls can cost a few dollars per minute, depending on prison.

        • Before cell phones there were letters. Seemed to work fine. Also, there are approved phones available in every prison. I see no need for a prisoner to have a way to bypass prison restrictions on communication. In fact, I see a lot of downsides to it.

          But, congratulations if you got your life together.

          You have a point, letters do work fine for most things. However, the GP is also correct it might take the perspective of someone who has been an inmate to understand this issue. Let me try to elaborate on the real issues surrounding phones in prison.

          The phones inmates have access to aren't very useful, and can actually be dangerous. In a typical situation, there may be 4 phones for 400 inmates. They're first-come, first-serve so there is usually a line or crowd around them. Other inmates can and will use things they overhear against you, so it's not safe to discuss anything you wouldn't feel comfortable having written on your shirt. This also means making a call at any specific time or date isn't practical, and calls are frequently cut short by others.

          Like everything else in prison, this creates a black market. Groups will camp the phones and sell time-slots and privacy to other inmates. The amounts they charge can be exorbitant, and are far too expensive for an inmate with a regular prison job to afford. Just for example, I knew a guy who liked to call his wife and kids every day. He worked in the prison kitchen making $18 a month, but the phone crew charged him $1/minute to use the phone. He stole food and condiments from the kitchen and sold them to other inmates to pay for his phone use.

          Most people who use a smuggled phone in prison aren't using them to commit or plot crimes. It's more often about having privacy communicating with family, friends, etc. I've known a few people who had legitimate businesses on the outside, and used a smuggled phone to continue running their business.

          Rather than blocking phones it might make more sense to issue each inmate a phone the prison can monitor. The whole situation around the payphones they provide drives a lot of violence and crime simply because there aren't enough of the phones.

          • by Kjella ( 173770 )

            You have a point, letters do work fine for most things. (...) Rather than blocking phones it might make more sense to issue each inmate a phone the prison can monitor. The whole situation around the payphones they provide drives a lot of violence and crime simply because there aren't enough of the phones.

            Well, monitored voice calls means somebody has to be on call to monitor. You also need to deal with all the accents and lingo to know whether they're talking about something they shouldn't or if they're talking in code. Seems like email would be a much more optimal solution, technically you just run all incoming and outgoing mail through a review process. Skimming a text is a lot quicker than listening to a conversation, you can escalate funny stuff for more thorough review and the inmates can spend however

          • Groups will camp the phones and sell time-slots and privacy to other inmates. The amounts they charge can be exorbitant, and are far too expensive for an inmate with a regular prison job to afford. Just for example, I knew a guy who liked to call his wife and kids every day. He worked in the prison kitchen making $18 a month, but the phone crew charged him $1/minute to use the phone.

            This isn't a phone issue; it's an extortion issue. Take away the phones completely and that same "crew" could just charge your buddy $50 a month for continuing to breathe, or $1 per meal for not having his food stolen, or whatever. The solution for this is not "hey just let everyone have phones"; the solution is for the prisons to do a better job of preventing that type of abuse.

            • Groups will camp the phones and sell time-slots and privacy to other inmates. The amounts they charge can be exorbitant, and are far too expensive for an inmate with a regular prison job to afford. Just for example, I knew a guy who liked to call his wife and kids every day. He worked in the prison kitchen making $18 a month, but the phone crew charged him $1/minute to use the phone.

              This isn't a phone issue; it's an extortion issue. Take away the phones completely and that same "crew" could just charge your buddy $50 a month for continuing to breathe, or $1 per meal for not having his food stolen, or whatever. The solution for this is not "hey just let everyone have phones"; the solution is for the prisons to do a better job of preventing that type of abuse.

              You're absolutely right, it's an extortion issue and the phones are just one aspect of it. Let me explain something.

              Many things in prison are "official" on paper but not actually enforced. The guards are supposed to ensure everyone has equal access to the phones, as well as the laundry and everything else. They are supposed to stop extortion and things like that. However, it's kind of an unspoken rule that inmates are supposed to police themselves. The guards typically only get involved when that fails,

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Before cell phones there were letters. Seemed to work fine. Also, there are approved phones available in every prison. I see no need for a prisoner to have a way to bypass prison restrictions on communication. In fact, I see a lot of downsides to it.

          But, congratulations if you got your life together.

          Google how difficult it is to make a phone call in prison. Now think about how hard it can be to get a bank or other institution to do something reasonable when they are being particularly thickheaded. These are unmixing things.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "If it weren't for an illegal cell phone, I would have been unable to keep my finances squared away" - 100% separate issue. Financial repercussions from confinement are not solved with illegal cell phones.

        Your case does not make a mandate for all prisoners having access to illegal cell phones even if in your case as you claim it reduced your inclination. It's not a general rule, cell phones reducing recidivism.

        • by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @04:43PM (#58362870) Homepage Journal

          Financial repercussions from confinement are not solved with illegal cell phones.

          They are when the phone company charges $2.80/minute for collect calls. Oh, and the prison gets a cut, which is the real reason why they crack down on personal cell phones.

      • While I'm glad you were able to make things work out well for yourself, I don't think having contraband phones in prison is good in the larger scheme of things.

        You may have been among the 1% that used a contraband phone for positive purposes but the rest of the crew were mostly committing crimes with them, running gangs, giving orders for whatever, all sorts of things.

        I'd be fine with blanking out the space inside prisons with cellphone jammers.

        • You may have been among the 1% that used a contraband phone for positive purposes but the rest of the crew were mostly committing crimes with them

          Not true. Most inmates use cell phones to keep in touch with their families and friends.

          running gangs, giving orders for whatever, all sorts of things.

          Do you really believe that 99% of prison inmates are Mafia kingpins and druglords?

          • Do you really believe that 99% of prison inmates are Mafia kingpins and druglords?

            No, I do not.

            The point is that you don't have to be a kingpin to be part of the hustle.

        • 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

      • Bullshit.

        You were incarcerated as punishment. That means you look access to things like cell phones. Cell phones are used to continue criminal activity from within jail and prison.

        If you wanted to keep your finances squared away, you should have thought of that before your felony. If you had the ability to take care of your finances without earning a living, then you should have provided someone a power of attorney or hired an accountant to take care of it for you.

        By the way, what exactly did you do to
      • Yup, your case sounds like a very typical example of the average convicted felon serving time. /Sarcasm

        I'm sorry you were picked randomly and put behind bars without cause. /sarcasm

        It's prison, you're being punished, and cellphones are prohibited. That prison is interfering with your ability to manage your affairs while behind bars isn't really the primary concern of the jailers.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:43PM (#58362606)

      There is virtually zero downside here.

      Actually, there is. The prisons make it difficult for inmates and families to use the legal phone system.

      The charges are exorbitant, and the hours and rules are burdensome.

      The phones are usually controlled by a for-profit contractor, looking to squeeze out every cent they can.

      The contractors, prison system, and guards unions actually benefit from increased recidivism that is strongly correlated with weaker bonds between inmates and their families.

      Prisons are prisons.

      Most inmates will eventually be released. They may even be your neighbors someday. So social alienation may not be the best policy.

    • cant wait for a riot and disaster , and no guards can use a phone to call for 911 help. HAAHHAHHA

      besides 4G/5G will use such a wide range of freqs, you cant block them all.

      some people are in prison due to technicalities or divorce payment issues or debt or simple pot possession.

      Prisons are NOT prisons.

    • 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

    • by ixuzus ( 2418046 ) on Monday April 01, 2019 @01:24AM (#58364454)

      Zero downside - really? I thought this was a tech site. Do we now have miracle jammers which stop at property boundaries now? I drive past a jail with a jammer fairly regularly and it will kill phone calls from a kilometre away. Beyond that there's an area where calls will get through but the signal is definitely degraded. It's a big problem when you have a minor accident and an older driver who is having bad chest pains. I had to flag someone down and ask them to drive up the road a little bit to call for an ambulance and then I had no idea whether they had bothered to make the call. I hate to think what it would be like with a severe accident where minutes counted.

      Unless the jail is in the middle of nowhere jammers are a bad idea. You don't get to screw with people who aren't incarcerated because you can't handle your contraband problem. If they're smuggling phones in that's not all they can smuggle in.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Why not just track them or stingray them? We do it to legal citizens but not prisoners?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      So the phone contractor for the prison can charge $5 per call, regardless of how long it went? Oh, and oops, you got disconnected after 30 seconds.

      Yeah, this is a CONSTANT problem in jails. Inmates get charged rates up to $10/minute effectively. A cell phone from outside can save thousands of dollars a year and allow you to spend that money on your family, child support, etc..

    • Why not just stop contraband from getting into prisons in the first place? I realize it's not an easy problem, but getting rid of corrupt prison guards would be a good start.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:49PM (#58362374)

    They should just put up their own cell tower and intercept all calls and triangulate the call and go get the phones.

    • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:30PM (#58362544)

      They should just put up their own cell tower and intercept all calls and triangulate the call and go get the phones.

      Um... Wouldn't that need three towers? :-)

      • Um... Wouldn't that need three towers? :-)

        No. You could put multiple antennas on one tower. You don't need much spatial separation.

        • Um... Wouldn't that need three towers? :-)

          No. You could put multiple antennas on one tower. You don't need much spatial separation.

          Thanks; I did not know (or think of) that. I imagine, though, that the greater the antenna separation, the greater the accuracy (precision? both?).

      • They should just put up their own cell tower and intercept all calls and triangulate the call and go get the phones.

        Um... Wouldn't that need three towers? :-)

        No, they know which antennas on the cell tower the call is being routed through and they can calculate the distance and direction, but I don't think that is precise enough. If it was they'd have done this already.

      • Triangulation isn't necessary, cellphones have GPS.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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

  • Geofencing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:59PM (#58362426)

    Jammers are messy. Why not just have wireless providers geofence prisons and deny service. They already have triangulation capabilities.

    • Re:Geofencing (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @06:24PM (#58363292)

      They don't have triangulation. They have cell identification. Easy enough if the prison is in the middle of nowhere, but a surprising amount are within cities* - cut them off that way and you also cut off all the surrounding buildings.

      *Often they were build just outside of the city, and the city then grew.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Yes, but they CAN geofence the prisons by positioning their towers facing away from the prison, and any signals that reach the prison (which can be from miles away, literately you can get roaming charges by being within line of sight of a tower 100 miles away.)

        They should take a page from convention center's poor signal coverage and just run their own pico cells inside the prison that overpower the the surrounding towers and send those signals to monitoring equipment, or throw them away.

        But I digress, I don

  • The real danger (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:06PM (#58362458) Homepage Journal

    The prison payphones charge $10/minute to whoever accepts the call. They don't want to lose those sweet sweet kickbacks.

    • The other part of it is that there are people in prison with serious ties to criminal enterprise and the authorities want to be aware of anything that they're saying over the phone. It's a lot easier to spy on everything when it's done through the prison's phone system.
      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        They could start with reducing the rates for prisoners talking with family on the outside to normal levels to reduce the non-criminal incentive to smuggle cellphones (including probably many thriving discount phone call businesses run by prisoners).

        Ideally, they'd let prisoners freely make monitored calls and set up their own mini-tower to monitor. After all, if the goal is ACTUALLY successful re-integration into society, fostering family ties would be an important step.

        • by guruevi ( 827432 )

          The goal of jail is to keep dangerous people away from society, not integrate or become an extension of it. If I go to jail and call on the phone, watch tv, see loved ones, surf the web all while getting a roof, heat, medical care and regular nutritious meals then what's the incentive of staying out?

          You get your time, your visitors, phone calls should be part of the visitation times you get. Rest of the time should be reflection in your cell on the decisions made.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            Gee, that works so well! At some point, most people in prison are to be released. They will either re-integrate into society or they will be forced to turn back to crime to survive. Most of us would prefer the former to the latter.

          • By punishing prisoners in the way you seem to propose, you worsen reoffending rates. Deliberately and intentionally making them suffer sends them a very clear message: "Society has no place for you, and we all want to see you in pain and misery." Eventually those prisoners usually get released. Do you expect them to feel any loyalty to a society which has made it quite clear they will never be accepted, and that actively wants to hurt them?

            • by mlyle ( 148697 )

              Yah, what a ridiculous idea he offers. If I can call on the phone, watch TV, and surf on the web, I *totally* want to go to prison.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:12PM (#58362488)

    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. ;)

    • Warden Faraday

      Exactly, jamming is stupid.. I believe the idea is to justify something much worse on the "outside"...

    • Cell phones are high enough frequency to leak through holes. You'd need to retrofit the entire prison, which is going to mean lots of construction work. Expensive.

    • 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. ;)

      Strangely I haven't heard one taxpayer volunteer to raise their taxes to pay for your "easy" solution. I'm sure we would have the nicest prisons if money was no object.

      Unfortunately, we live in the real world.

  • by pointbeing ( 701902 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:28PM (#58362538)

    You don't deploy technology to address a people issue.

    • You don't deploy technology to address a people issue.

      Why not? People are notoriously hard to change. Deploying tech is almost always a better solution.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      They know of voice prints and collect it all systems.
      The communications still gets out.
      Messages still get in.
      The problem is instant the US wide and global communications.
      Not who is talking, the location and what is been said.
  • 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.
  • local tower with $1/min roaming, $10 meg + $1 text each way will stop there use.

    • 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.

  • Entitlement (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @05:15PM (#58362986)

    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.

    • Re:Entitlement (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @06:33PM (#58363320)

      Because making prisoners suffer is a great way to win votes, but a terrible way to rehabilitate prisoners. The more you isolate them from the outside world, the most they will connect with their new friends inside. You just end up making a system where people can enter prison for petty theft or possession, and leave with an invitation to join one of the local gangs and no hope of a legitimate job.

      • Authoritarians don't care if their 'solution' makes the problem worse. There's almost no consideration beyond the first immediate and easy answer, as if the inevitable unintended consequences is just impossible for them to comprehend.

        It's not surprising that the prison system would follow the same pattern that brought us the drug war.

        • Authoritarians need someone to have authority over. Some sort of legitimate victim, who it is socially acceptable to persecute, and who their supporters feel little or no sympathy for. Prisoners are just about perfect for that. Most of society hates them already, and feels more confident in their own moral superiority because they feel such hate.

          • I'm not sure it's about the need for authoritarians might feel to exert dominance over prisoners in particular, or just the casualness in which they wield power without due consideration for the consequences. Think of 'zero tolerance' and 'tough on crime' policies that might seem at first glance to be useful actions to solve a problem, but really just amount to maintaining the appearance of 'doing something' to satisfy a demand. Much like the question the OP posed.

  • by DesertNomad ( 885798 ) on Sunday March 31, 2019 @08:19PM (#58363670)

    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!

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      If it's an unknown cell, or otherwise suspicious,

      Track the call to its destination. Turn that information over to law enforcement for further investigation.

      All calls to/from prisons may be monitored for security purposes. So extend this to calls involving contraband cell phones in prisons. And make a few organized crime, gang and drug busts on the outside.

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