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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

What is the reasoning behind this prisoner takedown?

[...] after an inmate in New Mexico was sentenced to 90 days in solitary confinement because his family posted updates and photos to his Facebook account on his behalf. [1]

What? Why? What business does the state have in that? And the state messing with your private property in this way without a court order seems plain illegal to me.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms-inmat...

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Unfortunately this is pretty small potatoes; the prison-industrial complex basically does what it wants. For clearly illegal conduct, if protests continue long and loud enough (e.g. Ferguson, Baltimore) then policies might be changed or murderers might be charged. For something like this, which is unethical but not obviously against a law, we rely on the ethics of those who manage the different parts of the system. Since very few of them possess any ethical sense whatsoever, correcting this injustice would require years of lobbying, lawmaking, and oversight, rather than a simple request to stop extrajudicial punishments.

Prisoners can only communicate with the outside world through monitored communications to protect the victims of their crimes as well as prevent prisoners from ordering criminal activity from behind bars. When you are a prisoner, you lose the right to private communications. It's prison, not summer camp. What 'right' does a prisoner have to Facebook? None. You might want to learn about why policies are the way they are before blindly complaining about 'injustice.' There have been numerous cases where witness retaliations have been arranged from prison; victim harassment is also common. That's why communications are monitored. Besides, why do we care? Facebook isn't some kind of human right. It's a superfluous luxury. If prisoners want to communicate, they have access to pen and paper. They have access to phone calls. This is far cry from fully-isolated solitary confinement with no communications at all. We're complaining about FACEBOOK for god's sake. What next, complaining that prisoners don't have access to Freshdirect or Uber?

What mirderers haven't been charged that you're referring too? Ferguson was a clear case of self defense; you attack a cop, you will get put down. How is that even controversial? Don't attack cops. Common sense. In Baltimore, those cops were charged. As far as murder, do you know what the legal definition of murder is? How about manslaughter? How about intent? You're obviously not a lawyer. I'm interested in if you are outraged that Dorian Johnson hasn't yet been charged for obstruction of justice for lying to the police about brown being shot in the back? How about his claim that Brown was running away? If you want justice, then Dorian needs to be charged. But I don't think you care about actual justice. You just like jumping on the anti-cop, everyone is racists bandwagon. Facts apparently aren't as important as smashing windows and starting riots over imagined injustices. The Baltimore guy had been arrested dozens of times. Why do we care about him and not the 28 people shot in Chicago almost every weekend? Do you even know the name of a single shooting victim from last weekend in Chicago? Where's their justice? Perhaps you should care about justice for the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators of it. But ok, let's worry about Facebook for prisoners; that's totally important.

I think it is uncontroversial that you may not be allowed to use Facebook from within a prison, I have no problem with that. What is not okay in my opinion is that they suspend your account. They could as well sell your house and your car, terminate your gym membership, bank account, phone contact and employment agreement because you are obviously not supposed to make use of any of that while in prison. And I see this mostly as wrong behavior by the state and would blame Facebook only insofar as they just blindly follow such in my opinion unlawful orders. Admittedly I am not from the US and this may well be covered by laws I am not aware of.

Imagined injustices? Yeah, no.

Here's a copy of the Derpartment of Justice's rather frank report into Ferguson Police Dept: http://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/documentcloud/index.html...

A few of the chapter headings:

  III. Ferguson Law Enforcement Efforts Are Focused On Generating Revenue... 9
  IV.A.1: FPD Engages in a Pattern of Unconstitutional Stops and Arrests in Violation of the Fourth Ammendment... 16
  IV.A.2: FPD Engages in a Pattern of First Ammendment Violations... 24
  IV.A.3: FPD Engages in a Pattern of Excessive Force in Violation of the Fourth Ammendment... 28
  IV.C.2: Ferguson Law Enforcement Practices Are Motivated In Part By Discriminatory Intent in Violation of The Fourteeth Ammendment and Other Federal Laws... 70
  IV.D.1: Ferguson's Unlawful Police and Court Practices Have Led to Distrust and Resentment Among Many in Ferguson... 79

There's more, if you can swallow enough pride to click on the link.

Yeah, that one shocked me too. I can only imagine that social networking could be used to reduce recidivism rates at the end of someone's sentence by giving them a way to connect with people on the outside (friends, family, etc.) that will be their support network as they reintegrate into society.

I can understand a parole officer or prison official wanting access to something like messages and friends lists to make sure that they are reconnecting with unsavory characters, but that's about it. Banning Facebook pages outright for inmates seems excessive and counter-productive.

> What business does the state have in that?

The main reason these sorts of rules seem to exist is as an attempt to prevent gang leaders who are in prison from continuing to effectively run their gang.

Now in practice this ends up requiring a fairly draconian crackdown on communications that may well not solve the problem of running gangs anyway. But this is the "why", in a nutshell.

Maybe this should be the exception and not the rule, though.

If you follow the link to the article[0], it quotes the rule this was done under:

Offenders in the custody or supervision of the Department are not permitted access to the Internet, nor are they permitted to obtain access to the Internet through third parties.

It also notes the sentence in this instance was overturned once the EFF and ACLU got involved.

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/new-mexico-inmate-face...

Prisons in the US are screwed up. Really really screwed up. And most people don't seem to care. Even the ones who know and care for someone in prison still feel that most the rest of the prisoners deserve what they get.

It's messed up, but my guess is simply that they're trying to limit prisoner communication with the outside world and they don't want the general public to see how they're run.

Yup. Let's dive into this a bit.

The thing is that when you invoke 'they' you don't mean Facebook. Facebook as a corporation doesn't care about the general public seeing how prisons are run.

The government - and where it shares coffers with private prison moguls - cares.

The government and the private prison industry are able to project their goals through Facebook.

What kind of person wants to dedicate their lives to managing humans trapped in cages? I can only imagine they're deranged sadistic people.

Some may be characterized that way, but my guess is that most believe they are taking the burden from society and sacrificing themselves for the better good. In other words, my guess is that most don't take pleasure in it but rather believe it's a dirty job but someone's got to go it.

Also, as it is with many blue collar jobs, its a job that employs them and support their family, or, self. No greater intention, good or bad

Not saying that I want to defend bad prison guards but there are also people who dedicate their live to killing other humans.

Right. Perhaps we should just abolish prisons? What about the sadistic people that chose crime to which to dedicate their lives? How many violent rapists, robbers, thieves and murderers are in those cages? We need cages as long as there are evil people. There is not a country in world that doesn't have cages. Interestingly, American prisons aren't as bad as they are in places like France or the UK or China or South Korea or anywhere in the Middle East. It's fashionable to complain about prisons. That fashion lasts as long as it takes until you or someone you love to have been a victim of a crime. When your wife is raped or your child abused or the family owned shop on the corner is robbed: what should happen to the perpetrator? Should we give them big hugs and a chocolate cookie? No. Those people belong in cages. The rights of the non criminal should always trump the rights of the convicted. It's tough to be in prison, sure however how many truly innocent people are in those cages? Not many. Some, but the vast majority did the crime. When someone steals from me, they still the ability for me to provide for my family. If they steal $100 from me, that's stealing about 1 hour of my time. That's one hour that I now can't spend with my family. That's a hundred bucks that directly goes from my children to some low-life. I have little sympathy for people that would steal things from my kids. I have little sympathy for people that hurt others. If they get their Facebook taken down; tough shit. Don't commit crimes and you can use Facebook all you f'ing want.

Reminds me of what they did with Weev. http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/13/hacker-andrew-auernheimer-p...

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