Continuing its offensive of suing its rivals for patent infringement, Securus filed suit against Ally Telecom and Network Communications International Corporation (NCIC).

The five patents at issue are:

1.) United States Patent No. 5,655,013 (the “’013 Patent”) entitled “Computer-Based Method and Apparatus for Controlling, Monitoring, recording and Reporting Telephone Access” issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on August 5, 1997: A method and apparatus for managing institutional telephone activity utilizes a computer control unit to control a trunk management unit, which connects institutional telephones to outside telephone lines. The computer control unit contains a database for storing the calling privileges and restrictions of institutional users and for recording calling transactions made by the users. The computer control unit implements a prospective call screening feature whereby outside recipients of undesired calls from the institution may enter a code that directs the computer control unit to prohibit similar calls in the future.

2.) United States Patent No. 6,560,323 (the “’323 Patent”) entitled “Computer-Based Method and Apparatus for Controlling, Monitoring, recording and Reporting Telephone Access” issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on May 6, 2003: A method and apparatus for managing institutional telephone activity utilizes a computer control unit to control a trunk management unit, which connects institutional telephones to outside telephone lines. The computer control unit contains a database for storing the calling privileges and restrictions of institutional users and for recording calling transactions made by the users. The computer control unit implements a prospective call screening feature whereby outside recipients of undesired calls from the institution may enter a code that directs the computer control unit to prohibit similar calls in the future.

3.) United States Patent No. 7,529,357 (the “’357 Patent”) entitled “Inmate Management and Call Processing Systems and Methods” issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on May 5, 2009: Disclosed are systems and methods that provide centralized or nodal inmate management and telephone call processing capabilities to controlled environment facilities. An inmate management and call processing system serves a plurality of facilities and includes an inmate information database. The database is shared across the facilities and contains inmate records that may be accessed and modified by each facility as the inmate is transferred among those facilities. Each inmate record may include, among other information, contact information of third parties whom may be notified of the inmate’s arrest and/or subsequent transfers of the inmate to different facilities. The inmate management and telephone call processing system may use third party contact information to establish accounts used to charge calls or transactions made by an inmate while residing at the facility. Some systems may also provide call processing, video conferencing, e-mail, voicemail, and/or videomail applications, and the like to the facilities.

4.) United States Patent No. 7,899,167 (the “’167 Patent”) entitled “Centralized call processing” issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on March 1, 2011: Disclosed are systems and methods which provide a centralized architecture for call processing. Embodiments utilize voice over Internet protocols (VoIP) to carry calls from a location at which calling services are provided to a centralized call processing platform providing call processing functionality, such as calling party identification, call validation, call routing, and connection to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Call processing gateways may be utilized to provide plain old telephone service (POTS) analog line interfaces for use with a plurality of telephone sets disposed for use at a location and at least one wide area network (WAN) interface for providing high speed data communication to a centralized call processing platform. PSTN interfacing by a call processing platform may be provided as a VoIP connection to the PSTN and/or as POTS trunking. Call processing platforms may provide for data sharing, aggregation, and/or analysis across multiple facilities served.

5.) United States Patent No. 8,340,260 (the “’260 Patent”) entitled “Inmate Management and Call Processing Systems and Methods” issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on December 25, 2012: Disclosed are systems and methods that provide centralized or nodal inmate management and telephone call processing capabilities to controlled environment facilities. An inmate management and call processing system serves a plurality of facilities and includes an inmate information database. The database is shared across the facilities and contains inmate records that may be accessed and modified by each facility as the inmate is transferred among those facilities. Each inmate record may include, among other information, contact information of third parties whom may be notified of the inmate’s arrest and/or subsequent transfers of the inmate to different facilities. The inmate management and telephone call processing system may use third party contact information to establish accounts used to charge calls or transactions made by an inmate while residing at the facility. Some systems may also provide call processing, video conferencing, e-mail, voicemail, and/or videomail applications, and the like to the facilities.

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A bipartisan group of prison reformers is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to stop phone companies from charging inmates what they call unreasonable and predatory rates to make phone calls.

Here is the full text of the letter:

May 18, 2012

CAP INTERSTATE PRISON PHONE RATES

Chairman Julius Genachowski

Federal Communications Commission

445 12th Street, SW

Washington, DC 20554

RE: Docket No. 96-128, Petitioner Martha Wright et al., Alternative Rulemaking Proposal

Dear Chairman Genachowski:

We write to you as organizations and individuals that represent a wide variety of views on many issues, but that stand united on the need to reduce the exorbitant rates for telephone calls from prisons. Unreasonably high prison phone rates unjustly punish the families of people who are incarcerated, and contribute to rising recidivism rates by deterring regular telephone contact with family members and loved ones. Our diverse groups strongly believe that action on a petition that has been pending before the Federal Communications Commission since 2003 represents a critical opportunity for the Commission to exert its leadership in this area. Accordingly, we urge you to act quickly to address this problem by capping the charges that can be imposed for interstate prison phone calls.

As you are aware from the record that has been compiled at the FCC, the costs of telephone calls from incarcerated people are often extraordinarily high—well beyond what most people in our country pay for telephone service. It is cheaper to call Singapore at 12 cents a minute from a cell phone than it would be to speak to someone in prison in this country. A typical interstate collect call from a prison has a $3.95 connection fee (regardless of the length of the call), while rates per minute can be as high as almost 90 cents per minute. This can result in charges of $10-17 for a 15-minute collect call or $250 per month for a weekly one-hour call. Prisoners do not bear these costs; rather it is the family members and loved ones outside of prison who pay these extremely high rates.

The high rates are caused by the system used to procure telephone service at correctional institutions. Prisons request bids from competing telephone companies, requiring each bid to include the payment of a fee or commission to the prison in addition to the provision of telephone service. The costs of the calls are passed on to prisoners’ families in the form of higher telephone rates, while the prison reaps the benefit of the extra fees and commissions. Thus, prisons have every incentive to choose bids that maximize fees and maximize telephone rates—a clear “moral hazard.” While competition would be everyone’s first choice for constraining telephone prices, in this case consumers—prisoners and their families—have no voice in the selection of the carrier. The prison system that does select the carrier actually benefits from the higher rates, leaving the actual consumers as a literally captive market, unable to shop around for lower prices.

Healthy relationships with their families and other members of the community are the most important factor in prisoners’ successful return to their neighborhood. Maintaining the bonds of a family and support network is a very effective way to reduce recidivism among inmates, which is an important national goal. The rate of recidivism is at crisis levels in the U.S.; within three years of being released, 67 percent of ex-prisoners re-offend and 52 percent are re-incarcerated. Americans are paying dearly for this trend. According to the Pew Center on the States, state and federal spending on corrections has grown 400 percent over the past 20 years, from about $12 billion to about $60 billion. Yet, predatory phone rates discourage regular telephone contact with stable family members and others in the community.

Prisoners’ friends and families often provide the only opportunity incarcerated individuals will have to re-connect with a job and a support network that can prevent them from returning to prison. We need more people connecting to those in prison, not fewer. Sound public policy dictates that we should not disincentivize the very behavior that will help us keep families together and in turn reduce future crime.

It does not have to be this way. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons and several states that have rejected these commission payments charge reasonable rates and maintain superior levels of security. A recent study by the Government Accountability Office found that the Bureau of Prisons typically charged less than most state prison systems, yet continued to produce some profit for use by the prison, and also met its security objectives. To illustrate, the Bureau of Prisons charged 6 cents per minute for local calls and 23 cents per minute for long-distance calls, and generated $34 million in profits in 2010.[1]

In sum, the exorbitant rates paid by prisoners’ families increase recidivism, and place an undue and unfair burden upon the innocent. These spiraling costs are not attributable to security needs and cannot be corrected by a marketplace solution. As the only agency with jurisdiction over long distance rates, the Federal Communications Commission is the correct venue to resolve this problem. A firm stance by the Commission, along with recommendations that will help guide the state regulatory bodies with authority over local telephone rates, will provide a strong impetus to improve the situation at every level. Prisoners will be able to be in more frequent contact with their loved ones, and the public will be safer as a result.

For all the above reasons, we urge you to cap interstate prison phone call rates and take up the long-overdue task of protecting a vulnerable population from abusive practices. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

ACLU

Rabbi Menachem Katz, The Aleph Institute*

David Keene, American Conservative Union*

Gary Bauer, American Values*

Asian American Justice Center

Chris Cannon, Cannon Industries, Inc.*

Center for Constitutional Rights

Center for Media Justice

Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

The Constitution Project

Consumers Union

Tom McClusky, FRC Action*

Free Press

Human Rights Defense Center

International CURE

NAACP

Galen Carey, National Association of Evangelicals*

National Council of La Raza

National Hispanic Media Coalition

National Urban League

New America Foundation, Open Technology Initiative

NOW

PolicyLink

Prison Fellowship

Public Knowledge

Rev. Lou Sheldon and Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition*

United Church of Christ, OC, Inc.

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs

*Institutional affiliation listed for identification purposes only.

The post Predatory Prison Phone Rates appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This is an article on contraband prison cell phones is an interesting analysis of the impact smuggled cell phones have had on the revenue from prison payphones. In a quote from the article, a prisoner states, “The prison system is mad because nobody uses the phones on the wall anymore.” In California, as in other states, there has been a big drop in the number of prison phone calls made as illegal cell phones have become more prevalent. Unlike prison cell phone jammers, the meshDETECT secure cell phone solution has no upfront capital costs and recovers the prison phone call commissions currently being lost via the smuggled cell phones.

Frustrated by the state’s inability to prevent thousands of illicit cellphone calls made by inmates from its prisons, California’s corrections chief is seeking help from an industry that has a big financial interest in his cause.

Prisons Secretary Matthew Cate said he will offer a deal to companies that bid for the next contract to provide phone service for state inmates: Install costly equipment that will block cellphone calls and see profits surge as prisoners use authorized services to connect with the outside world.

“If cellphones are inoperable, the company will make more money,” Cate said in a recent interview.

Prisoners are supposed to use pay phones mounted on the walls of their housing units to call people outside. They are charged collect call rates, and the conversations are recorded and monitored by prison staff. But the proliferation of smuggled cellphones in recent years has reduced use of the authorized phones and the ability to monitor them, and officials say they cannot afford the technology to block cellular signals.

The contract for inmate phone service is up for renewal. Cate wants the winning bidder to pay the estimated $16.5 million to $33 million that it would cost to install “managed access” systems in all 33 state prisons.

In one day earlier this year, a test of the system intercepted more than 4,000 attempts to place calls, send text messages and access the Internet from smuggled cellphones at a single prison, said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Paul Verke. He would not reveal which prison, citing security concerns.

Use of authorized phones went up by 64% in the days after the test, Verke said.

Dorothy Cukier, an attorney for Global Tel Link, the Alabama company that supplies pay phones and collect call service to California’s prisons, said that “contraband cellphones certainly have had an impact” on the number of calls placed from her company’s phones. The firm “welcomes the opportunity to discuss” Cate’s proposal, she said.

Prisoners’ rights advocates and civil libertarians say Cate’s plan would lead to financial exploitation of inmates and their families, many of whom struggle to pay for daily necessities. A typical 15-minute call from an inmate costs about $2.

“When the prison system gives the phone company a monopoly, they jack up the price,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project. “What we want to do is encourage more contact. That’s a prime predictor of [inmates’] success in the future.”

Bobby Taylor, who was recently released from Avenal State Prison in Central California, where he served part of a 19-month sentence for drunk driving, said he had a Samsung phone for most of his time there. He stayed out of trouble checking Facebook, following his favorite fishing websites and staying in touch with his 13-year-old daughter, he said.

“The prison system is mad because nobody uses the phones on the wall anymore,” Taylor said.

The state’s take from the pay phone concession was $26 million in 2008, when legislation was passed to bring down the cost of inmates’ calls. The government’s share has been reduced by $6.5 million per year since, prison officials said, and will be reduced further, to $800,000, this year.

Prison officials have been warning legislators that the explosion of smuggled cellphones — guards confiscated 261 devices in 2006 and more than 10,000 in 2010 — poses a public safety threat. Inmates use them to run criminal enterprises from behind bars and arrange assaults on enemies inside. Even the most closely watched inmates have been caught with them. Notorious killer Charles Manson has been caught with two.

Legislators complain that prison employees are the most likely sources of smuggled phones because, unlike visitors who must go through metal detectors, employees are not searched on their way into work.

Taylor said he rarely saw anyone using the wall-mounted pay phones during his sentence at Avenal.

“I think the only time people would use the wall phones,” he said, “was to call their people” on the outside “and get another cellphone.”

Source

The post Prisons Seek Ally In Crackdown On Cellphones appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

The “legitimate” use of prison cell phones by prisoners to stay in contact with friends and family is highlighted in this article. Amazingly over 10,000 contraband prison cell phones were confiscated in California prisons in 2010. That is lost revenue the state could have earned by deploying the meshDETECT Secure Prison Cell Phone Solution.

Update (4/19/12) This bid has been awarded to GTL

Frustrated by the state’s inability to prevent thousands of illicit cellphone calls made by inmates from its prisons, California’s corrections chief is seeking help from an industry that has a big financial interest in his cause.

Prisons Secretary Matthew Cate said he will offer a deal to companies that bid for the next contract to provide phone service for state inmates: Install costly equipment that will block cellphone calls and see profits surge as prisoners use authorized services to connect with the outside world.

“If cellphones are inoperable, the company will make more money,” Cate said in a recent interview.

Prisoners are supposed to use pay phones mounted on the walls of their housing units to call people outside. They are charged collect call rates, and the conversations are recorded and monitored by prison staff. But the proliferation of smuggled cellphones in recent years has reduced use of the authorized phones and the ability to monitor them, and officials say they cannot afford the technology to block cellular signals.

The contract for inmate phone service is up for renewal. Cate wants the winning bidder to pay the estimated $16.5 million to $33 million that it would cost to install “managed access” systems in all 33 state prisons.

In one day earlier this year, a test of the system intercepted more than 4,000 attempts to place calls, send text messages and access the Internet from smuggled cellphones at a single prison, said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Paul Verke. He would not reveal which prison, citing security concerns.

Use of authorized phones went up by 64% in the days after the test, Verke said.

Dorothy Cukier, an attorney for Global Tel Link, the Alabama company that supplies pay phones and collect call service to California’s prisons, said that “contraband cellphones certainly have had an impact” on the number of calls placed from her company’s phones. The firm “welcomes the opportunity to discuss” Cate’s proposal, she said.

Prisoners’ rights advocates and civil libertarians say Cate’s plan would lead to financial exploitation of inmates and their families, many of whom struggle to pay for daily necessities. A typical 15-minute call from an inmate costs about $2.

“When the prison system gives the phone company a monopoly, they jack up the price,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project. “What we want to do is encourage more contact. That’s a prime predictor of [inmates’] success in the future.”

Bobby Taylor, who was recently released from Avenal State Prison in Central California, where he served part of a 19-month sentence for drunk driving, said he had a Samsung phone for most of his time there. He stayed out of trouble checking Facebook, following his favorite fishing websites and staying in touch with his 13-year-old daughter, he said.

“The prison system is mad because nobody uses the phones on the wall anymore,” Taylor said.

The state’s take from the pay phone concession was $26 million in 2008, when legislation was passed to bring down the cost of inmates’ calls. The government’s share has been reduced by $6.5 million per year since, prison officials said, and will be reduced further, to $800,000, this year.

Prison officials have been warning legislators that the explosion of smuggled cellphones — guards confiscated 261 devices in 2006 and more than 10,000 in 2010 — poses a public safety threat. Inmates use them to run criminal enterprises from behind bars and arrange assaults on enemies inside. Even the most closely watched inmates have been caught with them. Notorious killer Charles Manson has been caught with two.

Legislators complain that prison employees are the most likely sources of smuggled phones because, unlike visitors who must go through metal detectors, employees are not searched on their way into work.

Taylor said he rarely saw anyone using the wall-mounted pay phones during his sentence at Avenal.

“I think the only time people would use the wall phones,” he said, “was to call their people” on the outside “and get another cellphone.”

Source

The post CA Prisons Seek Jammers in Cellphones Crackdown appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.