In an essay published in Slate on December 14, 2023, former Florida prisoner Ryan Moser said that officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) were “essentially playing whack-a-mole” in their efforts to combat an epidemic of “jailbreaking” prison-issued electronic tablets.

The tablets are issued free to prisoners under DOC’s contract with messaging service provider JPay, a subsidiary of prison telecommunications giant Securus Technologies. The devices connect to the internet at kiosks unless prisoners hack into the operating software to enable connection via a contraband cellphone—a process known as “jailbreaking.”

Moser said the only time he used a jailbroken tablet was one Thanksgiving when phones were down—which happens a lot, he added—so he risked disciplinary measures to make a desperate call his family via WhatsApp. Providing free messaging would reduce the problem, he said. But JPay collects one 39-cent “stamp” for each message a prisoner sends, while DOC pays prisoners exactly nothing for the work they are compelled to do during their incarceration.

DOC could also give prisoners cheaper and more reliable access to phone calls, which are currently provided by Securus competitor ViaPath—formerly Global*Tel Link—at a charge of 13.5 cents per minute. Though some prisoners use jailbroken tablets to watch porn, Moser said most use WhatsApp to get around these charges and make free calls.

Connecting to Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends is another reason prisoners pay up to $300 to have tablets jailbroken. Prisoners who do so lose access to JPay’s system, too, since the IP address of any tablet not synced at a kiosk for 30 days or more is locked out, also sending guards to investigate.

A prisoner with a modicum of technical ability can use a contraband cellphone or another jailbroken tablet to download software needed to update a particular model tablet and wipe it clean of JPay’s proprietary software. “You would think that a device used by inmates would be highly secure, employing a superior level of cybersecurity protocols,” one online pundit noted. “In reality, JPay tablets run on significantly outdated versions of the Android operating system that can be exploited for full unlocking.”

It can cost the prisoner with a jailbroken tablet another $250 to bribe a guard to smuggle a $25 Amazon wifi-hotspot so he can connect to the internet. Even if that cost isn’t shared with neighboring prisoners using it for their own jailbroken tablets, the whole $550 endeavor pays for itself in less than 65 hours on the phone with family and friends. For those who download the updating software, the cost can rise to $1,000, but jailbreaking tablets for a few other prisoners will recoup the investment and set up a handsomely profitable business.

All of which raises the question: Why has DOC let this mushroom when it claims to use “every tool at its disposal to mitigate contraband and illegal activity”? Maybe it doesn’t care as much as it says it does about the risk that prisoners will be exposed to fraud, cyberstalking and kiddie porn. Or maybe DOC simply uses those threats to maintain control over prisoners by manipulating their access to the people they care about most.

Source: Slate