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The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

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Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#101

Post by jacquesm »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #44
Someone1234 wrote: post #6

I don't understand why the Republicans voted against. Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since…

> The whole private prison thing makes me want to vomit. I'm not sure this is the fundamental problem. Seattle jail is run by King County Corrections and it's a human rights disaster.

That's terrible but it does not make commercial prisons 'good' in any way shape or form.

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#102

Post by ctdonath »

smt88 wrote: post #52
TimMeade wrote: post #10

Not 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…

Still means a lot. Cherry-picking a pair that differs little ignores the vast differences between other pairs. I moved from NY to GA; there's a deep cultural difference, and much that's desirable norm in one is nigh unto intolerable in the other (both ways). Wyoming is a very different lifestyle from California from Florida from Virginia from Maine etc. Drives many of us crazy that concentrated urbanites in one region want to boss around country folk living very different lifestyles/values/history, and do so due to sheer concentrated numbers.

Whatever happened to "celebrate [and protect] diversity"?

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#103

Post by jimrandomh »

smt88 wrote: post #40
jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Earlier 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.

You misunderstand. I don't mean an HTTP proxy, I mean a computer with no keyboard (technically, a keyboard usable only in a small whitelist of places). There are a small number of loopholes left (assembling messages with copy-paste from the right-click menu, and finding a website somewhere with an on-screen keyboard) but they're pretty easy to either close or to enforce with a small amount of human monitoring.

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#104

Post by nedwin »

comrh wrote: post #89
devit wrote: post #68

Why not $0? The marginal cost of the bandwidth required to make the phone calls is negligible, so there is no reason it should cost anything to the inmates. A simple solution to achieve such a result is to buy a cell phone plan with unlimited minutes and route calls through it.

> Prisons like the Maryland facility featured in the hit podcast “Serial” sign exclusive contracts with companies like Global Tel-Link, and receive a cut of the proceeds from each call, creating an incentive to raise rates as much as possible. Cause the prison makes $$$.

Also because, they say, there are costs to the prison in having phones including monitoring to make sure prisoners aren't breaking any laws.

I think these costs should be a cost of doing business as a prison, whereas they consider it should be "user pays".

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#105

Post by jimrandomh »

claar wrote: post #46
smt88 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

And that's without getting creative -- think Morse code via the refresh button, or specific-time-of-day page loads to specific links.

Most prisoners are allowed phone calls. If it's reasonable to let them do that, then it's unreasonable to worry about refresh-button-morse-code messages.

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#106

Post by ctdonath »

plonh wrote: post #97
ctdonath wrote: post #91

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 ab…

Was this because the phone system had the only people the prisoner could talk to about their problems?

Only if an unrelenting stream of verbal abuse & degrading profanity constitutes "talking about their problems".

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#107

Post by ars »

smt88 wrote: post #38
ars wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that. They felt they did not have the legal authority to do this, and that it would be struck down by the courts.

What would be the harm in doing it and then seeing if the courts struck it down? That's done in politics all the time. Their explanation was just a smokescreen. It's politically dangerous as a Republican to look like you have compassion for convicted criminals.

> What would be the harm in doing it and then seeing if the courts struck it down?

That's a pretty terrible way to run a government. When you elect someone you expect them to follow the law and do their job.

Not just do anything they want and say "it's fine, if we are wrong the court will fix it".

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#108

Post by nickalewis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
vonmoltke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that will work? If it was that easy, Securus would already have competitors.

I intend to use lobbying efforts in concert with a technical solution, even if I have to go state by state. Everyone here hustles for something different; I hustle for a better (imho) world. I cannot sit back and watch shitty people be shitty. Each personal project I work on is technical primarily, but each requires me to involve myself more in the political process by design. Technology alone will not change things,…

We should talk; My goals with Penmate[1] are somewhat similar. Technology can and _will_ disrupt this

[1] http://penmateapp.com

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#109

Post by wfo »

nickff wrote: post #66
revscat wrote: post #58

That may have been their stated objection, but the broader pattern belies this. The broader pattern is "make life as difficult for the poor, middle class, and the minorities as possible."

Why must you accuse your intellectual opponents of being mean and evil? Why would they be so cruel and irrational? Do you have any real reason to believe you are any better than them?

Because it takes a whole lot of energy to constantly invent imaginary earnest justification after imaginary earnest justification for a group of people who consistently come out against making life better for the less fortunate at every turn. No matter the cost or savings or lack of either, no matter the circumstance -- it's always vote against the interests of the disadvantaged.

And it doesn't help when it's literally the focus of their stated ideology. Or when the leaders of their party say things to the effect of "Our goal is to destroy this president at all costs no matter what it does to the country or the american people"

I get that it's easy to say it's always a mistake or oversimplification to call a group of people evil, but what if they actually are?

Re: The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates

#110

Post by thatswrong0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #101
DubiousPusher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole private prison thing makes me want to vomit. I'm not sure this is the fundamental problem. Seattle jail is run by King County Corrections and it's a human rights disaster.

That's terrible but it does not make commercial prisons 'good' in any way shape or form.

I don't think anyone is arguing that. But the private prison issue is certainly overblown - their existence is not the reason why things in the U.S. criminal justice system are so bad. They were created in _response_ to prison overcrowding in the late 80s to reduce costs. And the number of prisoners in private prisons is tiny compared to the general prison population. They are a problem, but not the problem.

Don't take it from me, take it from a prison reform organization: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/10/07/private_prisons_...

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