For a while I worked on a 3rd-party/collect-call billing system for a major telecom company. For several days after starting, technical discussions mentioned "inmate" every few minutes. Still getting my bearings, I finally piped up in a meeting with "surely it doesn't mean what I think it means, what is this 'inmate' you keep referring to?" Indeed it meant "prison resident". The problem was that inmates very often abused the phones, rattling thru call menus until they could get a live operator - then proceed to berate/insult/degrade/abuse/etc the person. Result was that our call processing had to ensure that, at every juncture, prison inmates were NEVER able to reach a live operator - and a bunch of money got sunk into this system JUST to mitigate the rampant abuse by prison inmates.
The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
91–100 of 199 posts
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read-only access, then: allow limited access without the ability to send messages, such as with software that disables the keyboard (but not the mouse) everywhere except the address bar, combined with monitoring.
"Read-only" access to the internet is impossible. Theoretically, a GET request is only supposed to retrieve data, but it can be (and sometimes is) also used to write data. There's no way for a screening algorithm to know the difference.
Pretty easy for wikipedia. Just route through tor...
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe in a poorer state like Mississippi the revenue state raised by more expensive phone calls is needed to properly pay for the prisons in question? I'm not saying I believe that argument, but I don't live in Mississippi, I don't pay taxes in Mississippi, and I'm extremely unlikely to ever end up in a Mississippi prison. Maybe it should be the job of Mississippians to weigh the pros and cons of these things?
I understand that you're proposing something hypothetical. So let's assume that it's true: Mississippi needs the revenue to run the prisons. The federal government should be able to say, "No, sorry Mississippi, you aren't going to run your prisons on the backs of the families of inmates." Why should someone have to pay extortionist prices to speak to a loved one? They likely had nothing to do with the crime (or the c…
I'm pretty sure that the loved ones of prisoners are being punished (by, you know, being physically separated from the prisoners) regardless of the cost of phone calls. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. Were I a Mississippian, I'd prolly be in favor of cheaper phone calls for prisoners. But aren't we drawing a line in kind of a weird place?
- OK to lock someone up in a cage.
- OK to charge them $0.11/minute to talk to someone outside of that cage.
- NOT OK to charge $1/minute to talk to someone outside of that cage.
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#94Not to be the naysayer on this but it is a very serious incursion on states rights. The legal consensus i'm hearing is that it will be overturned by the judicial system. Does the FCC have the right to tell a state or town what to do with local calls? That is the root of this. It's a given that they can regulate interstate, but historically intrastate has been the rights of the states.
It's probably time to give up on the ridiculous sanctity of states' rights. It made sense in a time when people lived in same state their whole lives, rarely traveled outside the state, and rarely communicated outside the state. Their whole lives unfolded within a few hundred square miles. That's not the case anymore. You can't subdivide the interests of American citizens by state anymore. What does it mean to be fro…
What does it mean to be from Seattle vs. Vancouver?
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the conservative FCC comissioners; this is a matter which should be dealt with in contracts between the government (state or federal) and the prison operator. The FCC has recently been venturing into fields where it does not have expertise or (clear) authority. When the FCC issues regulations which should have been addressed by another regulator or actor, accountability is lost. Who is now to blame when…
I'm not sure how I understand how an independent commission created by congress to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges"[1] is increasing the scope of their authori…
If you read the commission's charter broadly enough, and without regard to either the original understanding or the original intent, you come to all kinds of absurd conclusions. From the text you provided, one could, for instance conclude that the FCC has the authority to issue regulations which require parents to provide all children above the age of two with a cellphone capable of high-speed internet access with no data cap (just as easily as you could find that the FCC can regulate prison phone prices).
The FCC does not have authority to regulate phones or networks in any business or home, and cannot dictate whether your company can block certain websites or phone numbers, and the company can have a carrier set up these restrictions for them. Likewise, the FCC does have authority to regulate how phone services are provided to the prisons (though it is not clear that the FCC could discrimate prisons from other businesses), but not what happens within the prison itself or under the prison's request.
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#96I know this is controversial, but the humane thing to do is to allow inmates unfettered access to the internet. Contrary to the orthodoxy on the matter, I assert that this will reduce the strength and relevance of 'prison gangs.'
Extremely controversial. Stopping prisoners from harassing their victims/witnesses against them/enemies or organising others to do their dirty work externally is already a massive problem. Prisons have the ability to listen to calls and read mail to try and curtail it. Giving them access to the internet makes all of this far easier, and monitoring it far more expensive. Not to mention that now they can use the intern…
Giving them access to the internet, while monitored live, is definitely possible.
Even giving most prisoners full, unrestricted access is possible.
Look at prisons in Europe (I’m thinking about Germany here) and you’ll see that it works.
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#97For a while I worked on a 3rd-party/collect-call billing system for a major telecom company. For several days after starting, technical discussions mentioned "inmate" every few minutes. Still getting my bearings, I finally piped up in a meeting with "surely it doesn't mean what I think it means, what is this 'inmate' you keep referring to?" Indeed it meant "prison resident". The problem was that inmates very often ab…
Was this because the phone system had the only people the prisoner could talk to about their problems?
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
That software (whatever is used by China and Iran) is designed to tell the difference between parts of the web that are political and parts that aren't. It isn't designed to tell whether Inmate X is flooding Victim Y's Instagram with veiled threats. You'd have to create an incredibly complex system of rules for each individual inmate in order to do anything close to being effective, and even then, you'd require a lev…
I'm not sure I follow why the system has to be so complex. Why not just block access to Instagram entirely? China does, and they seem to be satisfied with the results. I don't forsee prison inmates getting access to VPNs. As other users have proposed, a locked-down version (not 'unfettered') of the web seems like a reasonable compromise.
Because "you have unfettered access to the internet, except for the parts of the internet with other people" doesn't really work. It's so stupid that pretty much anyone who hears it will immediately realize it doesn't work.
We're trying to prevent prisoners from communicating. The internet is a tool the sole purpose of which is communication. To be remotely plausible, you'd have to use a very restrictive whitelist approach, something like "you are allowed to send email (through the prison's forwarding server) to the following addresses".
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will result in local and regional monopolies and unbreakable contracts as it has with ISPs. Time and time again local entities are bribed or bought - at least when its done on the federal level there's one location that needs to be fixed, and maybe they'll actually have the resources to do a researched decision instead of signing up the first person to walk through the door with a solution.
I remain convinced that this should be dealt with in the prison's contract with the government, as other issues such as sanitation, clothing, etc. are dealt with, as it would allow for clear and detailed standards (as well as accountability and continuous monitoring) and not just price setting; however, if the problem here is one of monopoly, the regulator with the clearest authority is the FTC.[1] [1] https://en.wik…
The idea of prisons being governed by a trade commission would be almost comically ironic if it weren't so serious - we seem to be taking it literally the idea of prisoners being modern slaves. Contracts are always written to favor the one with more power.
Edit: In this case even there WAS a contract - the prisons signed an exclusive contract with Global Tel-Link, which would provide a percentage of the proceeds back to the prison. The deal incentivized both parties to raise prices as much as possible while the zero rights inmates had no recourse. Those are the sorts of contracts that happen all the time when there are no regulations. What would a trade commission do in this situation?
Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
#100Not to be the naysayer on this but it is a very serious incursion on states rights. The legal consensus i'm hearing is that it will be overturned by the judicial system. Does the FCC have the right to tell a state or town what to do with local calls? That is the root of this. It's a given that they can regulate interstate, but historically intrastate has been the rights of the states.
It's probably time to give up on the ridiculous sanctity of states' rights. It made sense in a time when people lived in same state their whole lives, rarely traveled outside the state, and rarely communicated outside the state. Their whole lives unfolded within a few hundred square miles. That's not the case anymore. You can't subdivide the interests of American citizens by state anymore. What does it mean to be fro…
"States rights" only gets brought up when the Repulicans don't like a Federal decision. If they'd quit the special pleading, people might believe them.