meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has been granted a seventh wireless blockchain patent for managing inmate financial transactions in prison using blockchain technology.

Our thirteenth patent granted, U.S. Patent 12,212,710 is entitled “Systems and Methods For Blockchain Wireless Services In a Controlled Environment.”

The claims in our latest blockchain patent are directed toward a system for regulating transactions in a controlled environment, a method for controlling inmate blockchain transactions comprised of rules enforced by network nodes/validator software, and a system for overseeing transactions between wallet accounts on a blockchain-protected network in a controlled environment.

This invention aims to provide a secure and regulated system for managing inmate financial transactions in prison using blockchain technology, enforcing compliance rules and obligations via smart contracts while allowing for administrative oversight and control within correctional facilities.

This patent describes a systems for regulating blockchain transactions in a controlled environment, such as a correctional facility.

The key components of the invention include:

1. A blockchain-protected network with an administrative node.
2. Electronic wallets associated with parties inside and outside the controlled environment.
3. Smart contracts that enforce rules for transactions.
4. A validator application that executes on the administrative node.

Key features of the invention include:

1. Ability to handle transactions for detainees in controlled environments.
2. Rules for modifying wallet balances and states.
3. Metadata addition to transactions for tracking and reporting.
4. Administrative override capabilities.
5. Automatic direction of funds for various obligations (e.g., fees due, restitution, debt payment, spousal support, savings accounts, and child support).

The system also includes a method for controlling inmate blockchain transactions:

1. Receiving and inserting smart contracts into the network.
2. Executing rules associated with each smart contract.
3. Validating compliant transactions and rejecting non-compliant ones

Our six previous blockchain patents can be found at US10,694,032, US10,855,838, US11,140,263, US11,425,244, US11,689,658, US12,212,710 and US11,956,383.

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Eleven years ago, we posted The Risks Of WiFi Deployment In Prisons outlining the security risks and operational challenges of deploying WiFi in prisons to support the connectivity needs of inmate devices. It was written in response to Global Tel*Link (now ViaPath) first announcing it would be offering inmate tablets.

After laying out detailed security and operational hurdles of inmate WiFi access, we concluded, “It is clear that achieving adequate WiFi signal coverage and application data throughput at a reasonable cost of installation is a challenge in this unique environment. Ongoing equipment maintenance expense as well as repair cost due to vandalism must also be considered when looking at the total cost of this approach.

In contrast, as evidenced by the high number of contraband devices and continued use of smuggled cell phones in jails and prisons globally, cellular signal strength and coverage is typically more than adequate, with no onsite equipment required.

Additionally, 4G LTE (and soon 5G) cellular may be much faster than a WiFi network with an undersized or overburdened connection to the Internet (designed for coverage versus designed for capacity).”

With the recent launch of Securus Technologies’ new inmate tablets utilizing a nationwide cellular network, their press release confirms our 11 year old analysis and assertions regarding the operational inadequacy and security risks of deploying WiFi in prisons.

From the press release:

“Because of the complex implementation requirements in corrections settings, deploying tablet technology can take months, quarters, even years to fully implement, but the infrastructure with our new tablet technology allows for quicker and cost-effective deployment”

“Currently, tablets rely on a complex, on-site setup to connect to cloud-based services, which is costly and time-consuming. EVOTAB and Officer T80 tablets directly connect to a cloud platform using a secure cellular network, which is faster, more secure, and less hardware intensive.”

Better late than never I suppose…

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meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has been granted a sixth wireless blockchain patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for U.S. Patent 11,956,383 entitled “Systems and Methods For Blockchain Wireless Services In a Controlled Environment.” This is our twelfth patent granted overall.

The claims in our latest blockchain patent are directed toward a multi-blockchain system to secure, manage, and validate forensic data in controlled environments such as prisons and jails

Digital Forensics

Digital forensics deals with legal evidence left in computers, devices, and digital recording media. This is a procedure and method for legally identifying and demonstrating the facts of a specific activity that occurred using a digital device.

Effective and reliable digital-evidence management systems require non-repudiation, i.e. cryptographic proof that an action regarding forensic data either occurred or did not occur. For instance who accessed information, when, was data altered and if so, how.

Inmate Digital Data Grows

With the wide spread adoption of digital devices such as tablets for use by inmates, the risk of misuse, financial fraud, external party harassment, etc. has grown exponentially.

The evidence of these incidents is essential to prison and police investigations because it illustrates the facts of the cyber-crime and connects inmates to their criminal activities. Therefore, it is crucial to handle the gathered evidence carefully to ensure that it is admissible to police investigations and court trials as well as to prevent tampering or misconduct.

Leveraging the blockchain in a corrections environment provides the inherent capability for insuring the transparency, immutability, and auditability of forensic evidence. However, there are security and privacy risks in using the same blockchain for inmate transactions as for forensic evidence storage, management, and use.

Inmate Data Forensics

Our patent claims a system with at multiple blockchains in a controlled environment. The blockchains are interconnected and networked but segregated.

There are a number of user nodes, each node with selected permission levels to submit and retrieve forensic data and at least one administrative blockchain node that communicates and coordinates the formatting of data, the submission of data, and the retrieval of data from the blockchains.

There is the ability to create and manage smart contracts that regulate creation, access, and modification of data; as well as the rules, settings, and permissions relating to blockchain data, interaction, security, and access.

Through this multi-blockchain system approach, independent but interconnected blockchains can have different security, privacy and access models to handle the forensic data associated with criminal evidence, as well as inmate medical records, financial records, complaints, legal case data, blockchain wallet use, and keys.

Our five previous blockchain patents can be found at US10,694,032, US10,855,838, US11,140,263, US11,425,244 and US11,689,658.

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meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has been granted a fifth wireless blockchain patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent 11,689,658 entitled “Systems and Methods For Blockchain Wireless Services In a Controlled Environment.” This is our eleventh patent granted overall.

The claims in our latest blockchain patent are directed toward:

Leveraging the blockchain to ensure and prove that a privileged voice or video call from an inmate in a prison is not recorded.

Inmate calls are typically recorded and filed into archives that law enforcement agencies and prison officials can later access in the event a person is believed to be engaged in witness tampering or other forms of harassment.

However, calls from detainees in jail to their lawyers are not supposed to be recorded and are confidential under attorney-client privilege.

An Widespread Problem

There a have been multiple instances in jails and prisons across the country where this privilege has not been honored. In fact, the state of Maine has recently enacted a law protecting attorney-client privilege in jail calls.

Listening to the recordings of these call was widespread practice in Maine. Nearly 1,000 of supposedly confidential phone calls between defendants and their lawyers were eavesdropped on in a one-year period between June 2019 and May 2020, in at least four county jails.

In some cases, intercepted calls were turned over to prosecutors, which defense lawyers said gave the prosecutors improper insight into the defendants’ legal strategies during the pretrial phases of their cases, when plea bargaining most often takes place.

“The act of recording inhibits people from having a free exchange of information, but then turning that over to the people that are engaging in the prosecution really destroys the ability to have a meaningful assistance of counsel”

Other Claims in the Patent

Another set of claims in the patent enable streaming payments during a voice, video or usage session by an inmate device, continuously creating and broadcasting transactions via the blockchain at predetermined intervals.

A third set claims a method of proving ownership of and granting access to inmate devices, such as media tablets.

Our previous four blockchain patents can be found at US10,694,032, US10,855,838, US11,140,263 and US11,425,244.

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meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has been granted a fourth wireless blockchain patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent 11,425,244 entitled “Systems and Methods For Blockchain Wireless Services In a Controlled Environment.” This is our ninth patent granted overall.

The claims in this latest patent are directed toward:

Prison facility managed custodial, hosted, and DEX based blockchain wallets, which can use sub-wallets and custom tokens for unique services such as commissary, voice and video communications, physical and digital assets, and access to specific applications.

Deploying various address formats in a blockchain network wherein the different address formats have different permissions with the intent of preventing inmate wireless communication devices associated with certain types of address formats from creating transactions with recipients with one of the same and a different type of address in directional transactions, as well as validating certain transactions and having certain transactions created considered valid.

Providing decentralized applications to enable payment for calls, commissary purchases and rentals, and media access via a smart contract that verifies permissions to engage in the calls, commissary purchases and rentals, and media access.

This latest patent protects the intellectual property necessary to enhance inmate wallet functionality, improve transaction security, and expand services rental and payment functionality via smart contracts, dAPPs and custom tokens.

Our previous three blockchain patents can be found at US10,694,032, US10,855,838, and US11,140,263.

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China’s eastern Jiangsu province has applied blockchain technology in prison management for parole, commutation and prisoner assessments, a local newspaper reported.

The official Xinhua Daily in Jiangsu reported last week that the blockchain-supported smart prison system used in 21 prisons in the province has been endorsed by the Ministry of Justice, which recommended promoting the idea to the more than 600 prisons nationwide.

According to the report, the platform adopted by the provincial prison authority has more than 800 functions and nearly 1,200 procedures to provide a one-stop solution for the inmate assessment, punishment and rewards system. “The whole process of law enforcement by police will leave online records and 100 per cent of the cases can be traceable [to every step],” it said.

The system managing commutation and parole, for instance, is connected with the courts and procuratorate so that the whole procedure can be handled online, the report added. Commutation and parole approvals will be open to the public on the official website of the Jiangsu prison management authority, as well as the province’s public administration information website.

Corruption and abuse cases in Chinese prisons, which hold about 1.8 million inmates and employ 300,000 guards according to the latest available data from 2012, often stir public anger, and Beijing has been working to root out unjustified commutations and paroles.

Blockchain is a distributed database where information is synchronized and shared by all participants. The data is not owned by any single authority, so the decentralized design enables it to be transparent and tamper-resistant, which could effectively reduce corruption or abuse in the prison environment.

We believe there are important use cases for blockchain in prison, such as inmate management including certification and electronic verification of forms, records, and data requiring action by an inmate; the creation of an inmate-specific contract in a blockchain network to monitor, manage and reward the behavior of an inmate; and reducing the costs of the traditional prison banking system, among many others.

Blockchain ties together the previously discreet domains of prison commissary providers, correctional banking systems, jail management systems (JMS) and the inmate communications services (ICS) providers.

Source

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Securus is requesting approval from the FCC to transfer control of Preferred Communications of Texas, LLC from Embarq to Securus.

Preferred’s sole asset is the contract to provide services to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) for which Securus is the subcontractor.

Embarq formed Preferred last year to hold the TDCJ Contract when it sold the rest of its incarcerated calling services (ICS) to Inmate Calling Solutions, LLC (d/b/a ICSolutions).

With the transfer of Preferred, Embarq will completely exit the ICS market.

According to Securus’s filing, this transaction is substantially similar to transactions approved last year in which Embarq sold its ICS business, except for the TDCJ Contract, to ICSolutions and Legacy sold ICS contracts, assets and customers to Global Tel*Link as part of Legacy’s withdrawal from the ICS business.

The TDCJ Contract

The current TDCJ Contract was entered into with Embarq on September 1, 2018. Pursuant to Texas law, ICS contracts must extend for a period of at least seven years and include two-year optional renewal terms. The initial term of the TDCJ Contract thus expires in August 2025 and it reserves for the TDCJ the right to exercise three optional two-year renewal terms.

At the time of the signing, the TDCJ Contract included 110 facilities of various sizes, including four facilities that were either mothballed or showed zero population, and included an estimated 155,239 incarcerated persons, of which an estimated 134,064 were eligible to make use of the services. Currently, the TDCJ facilities have a total ADP of approximately 120,000. The rate for all ICS calls under the contract is $0.06 per minute.

The TDCJ Contract requires TDCJ’s consent for the proposed transaction and the eventual assignment of the contract from Preferred to Securus. According to Securus, the TDCJ has given its consent.

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meshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has recently received a notice of allowance for our third wireless blockchain patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent Application Number 16/953,676 entitled “Systems and Methods For Blockchain Wireless Services In a Controlled Environment.”

A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

The claims in this latest patent are directed toward:

• Implementing and managing an inmate-specific smart contract containing granted permissions and rights. The smart contract describes the granted permissions and rights of the inmate and metadata associated with the inmate and the smart contract is used to monitor, track, and record permission usage by the inmate as well as inmate transactions via the blockchain network.
• A system for inmate metadata analysis and the creation of an inmate-specific contract in a blockchain network to monitor, manage and reward the behavior of an inmate. Based on inmate behavior, permissions and rights of the inmate are enhanced or removed via the inmate-specific smart contract.
• Use of the blockchain for inmate management including certification and electronic verification of forms, records, and data requiring action by an inmate. The inmate-specific smart contract is updated in response to completion and verification of the updated forms, records and data.
• A system for providing commissary and virtual asset access privileges to inmates via use of an access token as payment for or as proof of a right by the inmate to consume, view, and listen to physical assets and virtual assets. These virtual assets can be an eBook, an audio file, a software application, a video file, and voice and video call usage minutes.
• A means for inmates to use shared mobile devices to access the blockchain, including the access to individual wallets containing the inmate’s tokens and the inmate-specific smart contract.

Our first two blockchain patents tied together the previously discreet domains of prison commissary providers, correctional banking systems, and the inmate communications services providers.

This latest patent protects the intellectual property necessary to leverage distributed ledger technology to now integrate jail management systems (JMS) data and functionality across these three domains via a shared and common blockchain combined with inmate-specific smart contracts.

Update (10/5/21): The patent (US11,140,263) was issued today by the United States Patent Office. You can view the patent here: Eighth meshDETECT patent

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Consolidation within the prison payphone communications industry, also known as inmate communications services (ICS), continues with Global Tel*Link (GTL) asking the FCC for approval to buy (some? all?) of the assets of Legacy/Edovo.

GTL is the largest provider of ICS in the US. Legacy Inmate Communications is a wholly owned subsidiary of Jail Education Solutions, Inc. d/b/a Edovo (“Edovo”).

From the FCC filling, “On July 2, 2020, GTL, Legacy, and Edovo entered into a Master Transaction Agreement (“Agreement”) pursuant to which GTL will purchase certain assets and customers of Legacy, including certain customer accounts and receivables, certain customer agreements and contracts, certain vendor agreements and contracts, and certain equipment (the “Transaction”).”

Pursuant to the Transaction, Legacy will assign the following correctional facility contracts to GTL:

(1) Cook County, Illinois;

(2) Fresno County, California;

(3) Maine Department of Corrections;

(4) Bay County, Florida;

(5) Sonoma County, California;

(6) Kane County, Illinois;

(7) City of Santa Ana, California;

(8) Jackson County, Oregon;

(9) Mendocino County, California;

(10) Carroll County, Maryland;

(11) Yolo County, California;

(12) Dunn County, Wisconsin;

(13) Santa Clara County, California.

As a result of the Transaction, GTL will provide ICS to the Correctional Facility Customers pursuant to the terms of the above-referenced contracts, which are primarily county jail contracts.

Interestingly, the filing states, “Further, the proposed Transaction will not adversely affect competition because, after consummation of the Transaction, the total share of the interstate interexchange market of GTL will be less than ten percent (10%), and there are many other interexchange and international carriers operating on a nationwide basis, including other ICS providers. The Transaction will not provide Applicants with any competitive advantage as the result of concentration of fiber assets and will not harm consumers or negatively impact the market for facilities-based service. The proposed Transaction will not have a negative impact on the public interest, services to customers, or competition.”

With GTL and Securus Technologies controlling 80% if the total ICS market, we are not sure how this does not, in fact, continue the trend of adversely affecting competition in the ICS industry though the elimination of smaller competing vendors.

What this latest proposed acquisition shows is that the ICS industry is a duopoly and the current competition has neither the scale nor scope to compete. This market structure hinders true competition and thereby the economic and innovation benefits a robust marketplace would bring to inmates and their families.

The following image from a recent Prison Policy Initiative article highlights how these two firms have been allowed to capture this industry through acquisition.

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This seventh patent expands our Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™ intellectual property portfolio and further expands our position as the prime innovator  in the prison mobile device space by leveraging the security, efficiency and decentralization offered by blockchain technology.

The claims in this latest patent are directed toward managing commissary transactions using blockchain and smart contracts, for token management supported by a blockchain and for the enforcement of regulations in a controlled environment. This patent adds to the intellectual property foundation of Aisto®, our new blockchain powered inmate mobile device solution.

In general, there are quite a few benefits for the financial services industry to be achieved by using distributed ledger technologies (blockchain). This is also true for the financial systems used by detainees in correctional facilities to purchase services such as voice and video calls as well as goods offered in the commissary. Blockchain can address many of the problems currently experienced by inmates, their families and prison administrators using the current prison “banking systems.”

Banking systems used in prisons and correctional facilities have very little accountability. The lack of transparency excludes prison officials from seeing how inmates use their money outside the commissary. This lack of visibility also keeps all parties from becoming aware of discrepancies that may occur when funds are transferred, taken, or stolen.

Blockchain provides increased transparency among parties and as such improved reporting and monitoring by prison administration. Another key feature of blockchain is that any data recorded is immutable. Any data that is recorded on a blockchain can be tracked in real-time, leaving a very detailed audit trail. As such, it eliminates error handling and reconciliation, while providing the means to enforce rules and identifying and acting on policy violations.

The most commonly heard complaints about existing correctional prison financial networks are their lack of efficiency and lengthy delays when transferring funds into inmates’ accounts. Even when credit and debit cards are used to complete transactions, it can take hours or even days before the inmate has access to the funds. The account funding steps involved in using Green Dot cards are time consuming. Green Dot cards, for example, involve purchasing an actual card at a store. Money is placed on the card and then transferred into the inmate’s commissary account. Not only does each transaction (bank deposits / transfers and withdrawals) require a fee, there is also a fee every time the card is “reloaded.”

With Blockchain, settlements become user-optimised, which will save a significant amount of time and money, for both parties involved. Blockchain will remove the impact of processing friction and cost, as transactions settle instantly. The power of eliminating intermediaries is the ability to lower transaction costs and take back control from powerful financial intermediaries. Inmates and their families will benefit enormously as a result.

Combined with smart contracts, a self-executing contract containing the terms and conditions between the parties to the transactions, to regulate and execute inmate transactions extends the blockchain’s utility from simply record keeping to automatically implementing terms of multi-party agreements. An example would be the terms, rules, cost and scheduling of a video call between an inmate and his family.

With a shared database running a blockchain, the smart contracts are executed based on matching of terms and are validated by other parties instantaneously and without the need of an intermediary. This technology can enforce rules, regulations and ensure compliance while facilitating friction-less transactions.

Brian Byrne, Managing Partner of meshIP, LLC commented, “With this seventh patent, we continue to leverage the blockchain to create an integrated, end-to-end, blockchain powered services and financial system within correctional facilities. Combined with our first blockchain patent, this latest patent protects the intellectual property necessary to tie together the previously discreet domains of prison commissary providers, correctional banking systems, and the inmate communications services providers.”

Update (12/1/20): The patent (US10,855,838) was issued today by the United States Patent Office. You can view the patent here: Seventh meshDETECT patent

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