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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

A hacker has given The Intercept a trove of 70 million phone records leaked from Securus Technologies [theintercept.com], exposing the insecurity and questionable legality of the services offered to people imprisoned in the U.S.:

An enormous cache of phone records obtained by The Intercept reveals a major breach of security at Securus Technologies, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation's prisons and jails. The materials — leaked via SecureDrop [theintercept.com] by an anonymous hacker who believes that Securus is violating the constitutional rights of inmates — comprise over 70 million records of phone calls, placed by prisoners to at least 37 states, in addition to links to downloadable recordings of the calls. The calls span a nearly two-and-a-half year period, beginning in December 2011 and ending in the spring of 2014.

Particularly notable within the vast trove of phone records are what appear to be at least 14,000 recorded conversations between inmates and attorneys, a strong indication that at least some of the recordings are likely confidential and privileged legal communications — calls that never should have been recorded in the first place. The recording of legally protected attorney-client communications — and the storage of those recordings — potentially offends constitutional protections, including the right to effective assistance of counsel and of access to the courts.

"This may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history, and that's certainly something to be concerned about," said David Fathi, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project. "A lot of prisoner rights are limited because of their conviction and incarceration, but their protection by the attorney-client privilege is not."

The Federal Communications Commission recently capped the per-minute cost of prisoner phone calls [nytimes.com], amid a debate [vice.com] on how such services are offered in prisons:

There's one big task left: to apply similar rules to newer technologies — like email, voice mail and person-to-person video — which are subject to the same kinds of abuses found in the telephone industry.

There's little doubt that inmates who keep in touch with their families have a better chance of finding places in their communities and staying out of jail once they are released. But before the F.C.C. intervened, a call from behind prison walls could sometimes cost as much as $14 per minute [fcc.gov]. Thursday's order sets a cap of 11 cents per minute for all local and long-distance calls from state and federal prisons. [22 cents per minute for local jails.] This means an average (and much more affordable) rate of no more than $1.65 per 15 minutes for a vast majority of intrastate and interstate calls.

Prisoners' families, who pay for these calls, are among the poorest in the country. The new system will allow them to keep in touch without going broke. But the F.C.C. ruling does not get to a fundamental problem: Inmate telephone costs are partly driven by a "commission" — essentially a legal kickback — that phone companies pay corrections departments. The commissions are calculated as a percentage of revenue, or a fixed upfront fee, or a combination of both.

Original Submission