Inside the prison system’s illicit digital world | Hacker News Reader

Inside the prison system’s illicit digital world

fusion.net

25 pointsThevet15 comments

What is the point of prison if we can't keep guards from smuggling (drugs|cell phones|weapons|information), or prisoners from beating and raping each other, etc?

Prisons are some of the least secure environments in the world. They do not rehabilitate, nor do they effectively punish - violent criminals thrive so long as they are more violent than the next guy and able to buy the guards.

People are talking about radio jammers and Faraday cages. As part of a defense-in-depth strategy, maybe. But if we can't stop corruption among prison guards, if we can't expect even basic professionalism, what is the point? I don't want to be subsidizing the creation of a paradise for the most powerful violent criminals to rule over people who lost their way while poor. I don't want to be subsidizing something that fails spectacularly at everything it might be construed as trying to do, except make money for contractors.

We are doing something horribly wrong. Maybe we need to replace guards with a small handful of well-paid professionals in a heavily monitored, regularly audited control room. At least electronic locks and cameras can't be corrupted as easily. Maybe we need shorter sentences served entirely in isolation - there seems to be nothing good about the social life of prison. Maybe we should give up on the communications ban and let them Skype their families and browse Reddit all day - who can they really hurt that way? Maybe we should make prison more or less like day-to-day life, except that you can't leave. I don't know, but it seems like anything other than the status quo is worth trying.

We definitely need to incarcerate fewer people, though.

> I don't want to be subsidizing something that fails spectacularly at everything it might be construed as trying to do, except make money for contractors.

It does succeed quite admirably at one very important goal -- what some would call the only goal: prisons keep convicts in prison and away from you and me.

(Please don't take this as an argument in support of any position on prisons.)

Prisons are a dark and sad place. the guards inevitably turn into monsters that treat the inmates as subhuman, and the inmates develop all kinds of mental issues from being locked in a cage 24/7. Putting a person in a cage is a horrifying act. It's a relic of the dark ages that has no place in an enlightened society. Reforming the prison system ultimately has to be about turning prison into a place of rehabilitation instead of punishment.

One very interesting paragraph from the article:

"Managed access systems can cost more than a million dollars apiece to install. But some prisons have found a way to lower the cost by partnering with outside vendors. In California, for example, Global TelLink – a private company that operates phone systems at many state and federal prisons – installed managed access systems in correctional facilities at no cost to the state, as part of a five-year exclusive contract. (Which makes sense: Global TelLink believes it will make more money from pay-phone fees if inmates’ wireless access is cut off.)"

Fascinating that one of the companies involved in helping to cut off inmate cell phone use stands to make a profit from their activities. I have many gripes with the American institutional prison system, and this is just one small slice of the corruption that drives it.

Seems like prisons would have enough clout to get an exception from the FCC to run a radio jammer. This would also help stop the problem of drones carrying stuff into prisons. Surely jammers are selective enough to not interfere with guards' radios. My other thought was metal paint everywhere to act as a Faraday cage, but this wouldn't work when inmates were outside, and would interfere with guards.

Jammers are not selective at all - they basically DoS a local area with a signal that makes it so a particular range of devices cannot receive any data due to the jammer being closer/more powerful than whatever device they normally would be able to reach.

*On a particular frequency band.

You can have guard radios talking on another band.

So then people just switch the settings/models of radios being smuggled.

Perhaps, I didn't know they were smuggling radios.

Which is really important, because right outside of the prison/jail you really want your phone to work if you see some guy in an orange jumpsuit running at you.

Not sure what you are saying. If you mean that a jammer isn't tunable, and blasts out energy at all frequencies, you are wrong. If you mean that a jammer doesn't discriminate between devices, I don't think it matters. Guards probably aren't allowed to have cellphones anyways, so it's ok to block all commercial cell phones (if they even exist still). Really, you could block everything except the guards' radios. The prison security system is probably all wired, as well as the computers. This way, the only way prisoners could use a radio would be to communicate with someone standing right outside the prison fence, or with someone in another cell, which is a lot less convenient than the situation right now. If the allowed band is small enough, you could probably just have someone monitor it to catch this.

Meanwhile in Germany failed attempts to bring in a phone (and drugs) through drones were caught

(Link in German) http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/hamburg-drohne-mit-drogen-stu...

Why don't they implement their own local, monitored, cell network. They could still charge for minutes and data, but control what can be accessed and also monitor communications. Disney cruise ships have something similar called a 'wave phone'.

Do prisoners typically have access to power outlets? This seems like an easy way to curtail the problem.

Inmates do the actual day-to-day work to maintain the prison and its population, such as cooking, vacuuming, laundry, etc. Those often require access to electricity to perform, and guards cannot be everywhere at once.

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