prison

The FCC can finally hammer predatory prison phone call companies, thanks to just-passed bill

A brand-new law (awaiting only the president’s signature) will let the Federal Communications Commission directly regulate rates in the notoriously predatory prison calling industry. Under the t

NetWalker ransomware affiliate sentenced to 20 years in prison

A former Canadian government employee has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in a ransomware scheme that netted him more than $21 million. Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, a 34-year-old fro

Emerge Career’s tech-forward job training lets incarcerated folks hit the road on release

Reentering society after years in prison is difficult for many reasons, among which perhaps the most prosaic is simply that it’s hard to get a job — and what training and transition programs e

Build products that improve the lives of inmates

Almost one-third of Americans have some criminal history. The U.S. accounts for 25% of the world’s prison population. Let’s stop ignoring this demographic and build tools that really make the worl

Ameelio wants to take on for-profit, prison-calling rackets after starting with free letters to inmates

Among the many problems with the prison system are enormous fees for things like video calls, which a handful of companies provide at grossly inflated rates. Ameelio hopes to step in and provide free

Edovo, a startup that provides tablet-based education to incarcerated people, snags some funding

Twilio has invested $250,000 in startup Edovo, which creates tablet-based educational content for incarcerated individuals. Twilio has also invested grant money in the International Rescue Committee,

The Last Mile is launching its coding program at a women’s prison in Indiana

The Last Mile, a coding program that first launched inside California's San Quentin State Prison, has expanded to its first out-of-state prison. Yesterday, The Last Mile announced its plans to launch

INNOVATE2016: How digital can reinvent American government

Andrew Keen Contributor Andrew Keen is the author of three books: Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo and The Internet Is Not The Answer. He produces Futurecast, and is the host of Keen On. More post

UK prisons can now get cellphones remotely blocked over suspected illicit use

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, really, that mobile phones are becoming an increasing concern among those tasked with policing prison populations. Smuggled in cellulars are being linked to all sort

Weev Talks About Life In Prison And His Plans To Open A Hedge Fund, TRO LLC

<a href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/Weev">Weev</a> aka Andrew Auernheimer is free. The 29-year-old hacker, released from the Allenwood Federal Correctional Center in Pennsylvania last weekend, has spe

Prison software sniffs out cell phone signals

<img src="http://crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/locator.gif" alt="locator" />Admittedly, I've never been in prison (putting technology bloggers in with regular inmates is NOT safe for the i

Tip: Buying new HDTVs for inmates right before the Super Bowl makes people mad

<img src="http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/hamtv.jpg">The Boston Herald is reporting that, here in my home state of Massachusetts, “The cash-strapped and over-crowded prison syst

Yarrr: Four 'Pirate Bay' captains in hot water

About a year ago, I learned that just because you don’t store copyrighted materials on your server, “facilitating the transfer or consumption” of said material is still a no-no. I wa

Prisoners, meet the body orifice security scanner

Acronyms are fun. In light of that fact, I’m pleased and honored to tell you about the BOSS. It stands for body orifice security scanner. It’s an almost-$13,000 security chair being tested

Sex Offenders Complain About Removed PCs

Over in Minnesota, a group of imprisoned sex offenders are pissed off because guards confiscated PCs they were using in their cells/rooms. So like any American, they took it to a court of appeals, onl