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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

#41

Post by bzbarsky »

mtrpcic wrote: post #27
Someone1234 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a lot easier to curtail things like this on the internet. It would be dirt easy to set it up to only allow certain content (let's call it "constructive" content, like Wikipedia, various news sources, etc.), while blocking content with specific keywords. Prisons have a finite amount of traffic, it's not like we're setting up the GFC. It's dirt simple and dirt cheap to set iptables up to handle this with the limit…

So I assume you mean allow Wikipedia but not makign edits to it (since those can be used to communicate to people on the outside, and preventing that is part of the stated goal)?

And news sites but not the comments sections on those news sites?

It sucks that this is even an issue, I agree. The proposal in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10434720 would be interesting, if workable.

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

#43

Post by smt88 »

jMyles wrote: post #5
zem wrote: post #3

> The reform passed 3:2 along partisan lines, with the appointed Democrat commissioners voting in favor, and Republicans against. it's kind of terrifying to think that a single republican in the wrong place could have blocked a measure affecting millions of people.

It's just odd on its face that so many of these decisions, which absolutely have an otherwise legislative character, are being made by the executive branch.

As someone else said, the FCC isn't created or controlled by the executive branch.

Many decisions with a "legislative character" are, however, made by the executive branch through executive agencies (Dept of Agriculture, Dept of Homeland Security, etc.) These agencies only exist with the blessing of Congress, though, so they technically derive their power from the legislative branch.

If that sounds weird, it is. The legality and limits of executive agencies is still somewhat of an open question, even though they've been around for 150+ years.

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

#44

Post by DubiousPusher »

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.

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

#45

Post by intopieces »

tomjen3 wrote: post #22
jMyles wrote: post #4

I 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.'

How will you ensure the internet is not used for crime, to harass or coerce witnesses or otherwise act against a need for resocialization?

They could employ internet filtering software used by China, Syria and Iran. Shouldn't be too difficult to get their hands on, considering it's made by an American company, Blue Coat Systems [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems

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

#46

Post by claar »

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.

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

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

#47

Post by _delirium »

smt88 wrote: post #37
spoiledtechie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds more liberal to me. To have a monopoly within a government entity.

"Liberal" means different things in different contexts. In the US, in popular usage, it means someone who supports extensive public programs (education, welfare, research, etc.), even if it means that taxes are higher. It also means someone who is against the government infringing on social freedoms, like equality for people with different sexualities, genders, or races. The classical usage of "liberal" means someone…

Even in Europe there are quite a few varieties. Some European liberals are more along the lines of American libertarians, but most are considerably more open to some degree of social safety net, and would be positioned to the left of more of a Reagan/Thatcher approach. Especially some kind of welfare system, universal public education, and universal provision of healthcare are common viewpoints. Some of this is the influence of left-Hayekians and German "social market economy" theorists within the European liberal movement, but some of those positions also have quite old roots in liberalism (e.g. Thomas Jefferson was a well-known American classical liberal favoring universal public education).

The UK Liberal Democrats and the Danish Social Liberal Party are two examples of liberal parties fairly solidly taking that viewpoint. The German FDP also used to in earlier years, but since the '80s is more Thatcher-influenced. The UK Economist newsmagazine also has views that could be put in this category.

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

#48

Post by smt88 »

intopieces wrote: post #45
tomjen3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you ensure the internet is not used for crime, to harass or coerce witnesses or otherwise act against a need for resocialization?

They could employ internet filtering software used by China, Syria and Iran. Shouldn't be too difficult to get their hands on, considering it's made by an American company, Blue Coat Systems [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems

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 level of AI sophistication that doesn't exist yet.

It's just not possible right now.

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

#50

Post by smt88 »

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,…

Check out https://pigeon.ly
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