Parolees Are Being Forced To Download Telmate's Guardian App That Listens and Records Every Move (gizmodo.com) 228
XXongo writes: Monitoring parolees released from prison by an app on their smartphone sounds like a good idea, right? The phone has facial recognition and biometric ID, and a GPS system that knows where it is. But what if the app doesn't work? In a story on Gizmodo, the [Telmate Guardian] app's coding is "sloppy" and "irresponsible" and its default privacy settings are wildly invasive, asking for "excessive permissions" to access device data. And the app isn't even accurate on recognizing parolees, nor on knowing location, with one parolee noting that the app set off the high-pitched warning alarm and sent a notification to her parole officers telling him that she was not at home multiple times in the middle of the night, when she was in fact at home and in bed. The device also serves as a covert surveillance bug, with built-in potential to covertly record ambient audio from the phone, even in standby mode -- a feature which is not even legal in many states. "But there's nothing you can do," according to one parolee. "If you don't accept it, then you go back to prison. You're considered their property. That's how they see it."
It's right there in the name: "Parolee" (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't done with your sentence when paroled, you're simply being given more leeway ( either for good behavior or to free up space for others ). You aren't "free" in any sense. The alternative is to stay in prison, of course, which I'm thinking is even more restrictive and invasive.
I think the trouble is we have "Parollees" (Score:5, Insightful)
And like I've said before, if you've got so many ax murders and pedophiles that they can swing elections maybe you've got bigger problems...
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Ex-convict disenfranchisement is a problem.
This article is about serving convicts, so one thing has nothing to do with the other, unless you include vaguely tangentially related concepts.
Re:I think the trouble is we have "Parollees" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think the trouble is we have "Parollees" (Score:5, Insightful)
Letting prisoners vote is an exceedingly good idea because it is one of the only ways to ensure that the police force isn't being used as a voter-suppression or rights-suppression force. You only have to look at the history of marijuana prohibition or Jim Crow laws to see this in action.
Letting prisoners vote gives prisoners a better chance at preventing prisons from becoming violence-ridden hellholes, to eliminate felony charges for ridiculous things like drug abuse, and to give former convicts the ability to better transition back into society (thus reducing recidivism). A major reason our laws and justice system are so cruel to felons and prioritize retribution over rehabilitation is because the people who have first-hand experiences with these problems are disempowered to do anything about it. The right to vote is the least we should do.
Re:I think the trouble is we have "Parollees" (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus if you have enough people in prison that allowing prisoners to vote can have a significant affect on the outcome, then you have way way too many people in prison and what better way to get the law changed than to get those badly affected by it to vote?
Letting prisoners vote gives prisoners a better chance at preventing prisons from becoming violence-ridden hellholes, to eliminate felony charges for ridiculous things like drug abuse, and to give former convicts the ability to better transition back into society (thus reducing recidivism).
"One night of rehabilitation" from Idiocracy seems less and less like an exaggeration.
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I see shill operations with mod points are out in full force. Someone gives a reasonable statement about how prisoners should not get a vote, and why, until, maybe, they have fully completed their sentence and parole, and is modded down to 0.
Another says exactly the opposite, and is modded up.
Come on, people. This is not what mod points are for. Read my .sig.
And for the record, I think prisoners should have the right to vote, because they are in prison for laws created by elected officials, and that shou
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Can I get a ticket to your utopian world where no one is ever falsely accused and convicted and no one ever ends up on a list of sex offenders because they peed in a back alley?
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Except in the UK. We are supposed to let prisoners vote according to EU law, but we've been dealing with that by simply refusing to acknowledge it for years and ignoring court rulings. Soon we will leave the EU and it will no longer be an issue.
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If a prisoner can't vote, why should they have any obligation to obey the laws then imposed upon them?
Sorry but democracy doesn't work if people can't participate.
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If a prisoner can't vote, why should they have any obligation to obey the laws then imposed upon them?
The same reason that 17 year olds need to obey the laws, and people who didn't bother to vote need to obey the laws. And the same reason you need to obey the law if your party didn't win.
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The same reason that everyone else is: If you don't obey the law, the government will send men with big clubs and guns after you. Law can be a many-layered and complicated structure, but it always rests upon the enforceable threat of violence.
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Wait - do you seriously think that boomers snatched up all of the low UIDs?
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A better alternative is to be rich and powerful. A lot of the stuff you do that would be criminal in a sane society has been made legal (like many kinds of stock market manipulation, or poisoning the water supply of a whole city, or failing to provide protective equipment to staff who have to work during this pandemic). And if you do manage to break a few laws, there's not much chance you'll actually have to do time.
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Parole has rules for both the parolee AND the officers monitoring the parolee. If the app is being rolled out as a partial replacement for the parole officer and the app can't follow the rules, the app is the problem. Not the parolee.
A parole officer isn't supposed to lie about the location of a parolee.
A parole officer isn't supposed to place listening devices in the vicinity of a parolee without a surveillance warrant.
A parole officer can't falsely claim that parolee is violating terms of parole when th
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That doesn't excuse bugging them and potentially recording other innocent people.
Anyway the point of parole is to encourage good behaviour and to help them reintegrate into society so they have a chance to build some kind of life away from crime. This kind of invasive surveillance seems counter productive.
do they get an free phone and free data? (Score:2)
do they get an free phone and free data?
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Your obsession with this could be classified as clinical.
Re:do they get an free phone and free data? (Score:4, Informative)
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After paying $20 for every short phone call in prison it must feel like a bargain to pay $90 a month for the app.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nothing will get you commuted or paroled faster than being a reforms advocate.
On the other hand, it might just land you in solitary confinement or beaten to death by prison guards.
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The fact that it is commonly accepted that in US prisons an inmate will be raped and assaulted by fellow inmates or guards is amazing. And I have yet to see a politician say this is a problem that needs to be corrected.
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Nothing will get you commuted or paroled faster
These people are paroled...
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Then return to jail and enroll in as many educational programs as you can. Check out books from the library and spend your time reading
Yes, because everyone wants to live in a 6x10 room, sleeping on a 2 inch mattress, being told when to wake and eat and sleep, earn little to no money because one's pay goes to one's upkeep in prison if one has a job, where one will be surrounded only by members of the same sex for years, where one showers in a large room with many others, where one is surrounded by dangerous criminals who may want rape one, where one is not allowed to have consensual sex, where one has little to no privacy, and where one ma
No shit, sherlock (Score:3)
"default privacy settings are wildly invasive"
That's literally the idea. They're on parole, this thing is supposed to watch them. I'm surprised it even has settings.
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You are mis-interpreting "wildly". The author didn't simply mean "very"; the author meant "unnecessarily". You and the author no doubt disagree where the bounds of necessity lie.
Funny Opposite At The Probation Office (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, when I was on probation for a youthful indiscretion, I recorded every meeting on my phone. Most probation officers were fine, but I moved at one point and was transferred to the local county (Travis to Collin in TX), and the guy I dealt with in Collin County had the whole slightly retarded, so always paranoid people were trying to pull a fast one on him thing going on. He would go out of his way to be creepy, invasive, and obtuse about regular work activities (I worked retail). And multiple times he threatened to have my probation extended or community service hours increased for no other reason than to lob a threat. I would come in having done my required community service hours, but he would threaten me because I did them all in 2 days the week prior instead of spread out over the last 4 weeks (working retail, it was easier to do 2x 8-12 hour days when I had days off since my schedule varied a lot). I eventually called his bluff, and he just got flustered, more angry, but had nothing to do except bump my next meeting to 3 weeks out instead of a month. Still had the next month's hours done.
Hum (Score:2)
You have to pay ? (Score:2)
After a bit of googling I'm utterly amazed that is some states the person being paroled has to pay service fees to the private company managing their parole.
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You shouldn't be. It's all a big crony-ridden mess.
Re: You have to pay ? (Score:2)
If you have a court required ankle monitor for house arrest you are generally required to pay for that too.
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There is always the option of returning to your cell, where you don't have to pay any money.
Besides, employment is usually a condition of parole as well, so they should be able to pay the fee if it isn't exorbitant (I have no idea if it is or not).
Re:You have to pay ? (Score:4, Interesting)
In 43 states, the prisoner has to pay "rent" to be incarcerated.
https://www.prisonlegalnews.or... [prisonlegalnews.org]
Difference between USA and EU (Score:5, Insightful)
I always find it amazing how perverse the basic idea of justice system is in the USA. Everyone seems to agree that if you commit any crime then you have to suffer as a punishment. Jails have to be tough and dangerous, food has to be terrible, preferably there should be violence and rape or otherwise the system doesn't work and your giving criminals a free pass. When you commit a crime you loose all your rights (some preferably for the rest of your life) and the system can do with you whatever it wants.
In EU the main goal is to avoid more crime so you try to educate criminals or if that's not possible you isolate them from the rest of society. That's all. Suffering is not part of the design. Of course punishment can form part of re-education and is needed so that society feels like justice was served but it's not the main goal of the entire justice system.
People in USA think that it's just some leftard idea, being soft on crime and surely it's stupid and cannot work but crime and recidivism rates say otherwise. Looking from the outside I'm always amazed how widespread this primitive view is in US, even among educated people.
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Actually recidivism in the US is the same as in countries like Denmark and Sweden. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Re:Difference between USA and EU (Score:4, Informative)
Conclusions: Although some countries have made efforts to improve reporting, recidivism rates are not comparable between countries. Criminal justice agencies should consider using reporting guidelines described here to update their data.
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Actually recidivism in the US is the same as in countries like Denmark and Sweden.
Your link specifically separates Denmark and Sweden into a different category and even places them in their own section in the graph specifically because you can't compare the reported recidivism rate between them and the USA due to a widely different criminal justice system.
And in countries which are directly comparable, in their own category on the graph, the USA is by quite a bit the worst, along with New Zealand. But unlike the USA which also has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the worl
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My point exactly! If the rates with suffering and without it are the same then you're just making the criminals suffer for fun. It doesn't help prevent crime. It just there so that Americans know they are though of crime. It's only there because the justice system is build on the same desire for revenge that exists in the most primitive societies.
Well, having people suffer without need falls under "sadism" and "evil". It is a cave-man level approach and something civilized people do not do. It does nicely demonstrate the level of refinement (or rather its complete absence) of its proponents.
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In EU the main goal is to avoid more crime ... Of course punishment can form part of re-education and is needed so that society feels like justice was served but it's not the main goal of the entire justice system.
I don't think you can make such a sweeping statement for the whole EU. Europe is a big place; every country within has freedom to design their justice system. One goal that you didn't mention is that the punishment should serve as a deterrent for those who are thinking of committing a crime. Sure, there are discussions about the trade-off between punishment/revenge/deterrent versus preventing recidivism, but's not obvious that the later is more important. For example, life sentences for small-scale selling
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I don't disagree with the broad thrust of what you're saying, but mandatory life sentences for murder in the UK doesn't mean mandatory life in prison. To the point of this article, it means you are always out on licence (ie parole).
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Prison is a for-profit business in the US. Therefore the prisons are motivated to provide the service as the lowest possible cost to maximise their profits, i.e. the lowest quality food, minimal security including protection from assault for the prisoners, slave labour, high charges for phone calls etc. They also lobby to make more things a crime and get conviction rates up so they have more business opportunities.
To make sure the public supports their profiteering they use propaganda to make them hate crim
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Indeed. The EU approach is one of problem management and resolution. The US is the one of religious fanatics wanting to hurt people, with a large component of sadism and destroying anybody that dared not to follow the rules. It is pretty clear which one of those works and which one makes the problem worse.
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If you treat people kindly, it might or might not correct their behavior. Most of the time it won't. If you treat people inhumanely, though, it will never teach them to be humane to others.
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You do realize that 'consequence-free world for everyone' and 'as much suffering as possible for any crime' are not the only options? American prisons are primarily about protecting the society at large? Really? For profit prisons as well? Is forcing everyone to accept plea deals protecting society? Is dead penalty? Locking away the mentally ill?
And European Union is working out great, thanks for asking. European left will still need many decades to reach the levels of absurdity Americans managed in virtual
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You do realize that 'consequence-free world for everyone' and 'as much suffering as possible for any crime' are not the only options?
In the mind of a fanatic, they are. You are either with them, and then you are one of the blessed, or you are not and then you deserve eternal damnation. Stupid, violent, sadistic, but that is how these people are.
So just keep it off? (Score:2)
Just keep the phone off or get one of those very basic lcd green and black ones that aren't smartphones?
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The parole officer simply files a revocation of your parole and the court issues a warrant for your arrest.
Once all of your new issues are sorted. Then you can talk to your PO who can simply follow through with the revocation or not. Their discretion
Re: So just keep it off? (Score:2)
Seems like making your parole dependent on you owning or not owning a phone is unethical. Especially if it depends on you having to pay monthly.
Re: So just keep it off? (Score:2)
That is true. It should be a standalone device and paid for by the taxpayers. (Parole should be cheaper than imprisonment after all.)
It's happening (Score:2)
What if this doesn't fit, let alone run ... (Score:2)
... on my 2001 Siemens M35i Feature Phone? Am I still free to go? :-P
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Well, I'm afraid no parole for you, then.
Why is crap good enough for tax dollars? (Score:2)
Constitutional arguments aside, if most people would not buy an app this bad for personal use, how can anyone justify spending, and wasting, tax dollars on it?
The possible covert ambient recording is just one of the serious flaws. Assuming the coding is as sloppy and buggy as claimed by both users and experts, there are a plethora of critical quality and execution issues.
From the Gizmodo article,
https://gizmodo.com/when-your-... [gizmodo.com]
"... a review of the Android version of the app’s underlying architecture
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The only part that matters (Score:2)
And the app isn't even accurate on recognizing parolees, nor on knowing location, with one parolee noting that the app set off the high-pitched warning alarm and sent a notification to her parole officers telling him that she was not at home multiple times in the middle of the night, when she was in fact at home and in bed.
Everything else that is complained about is irrelevant because these are convicted criminals service their sentence. If this app doesn't work then it gives a false sense of security and shouldn't be used.
Good idea? (Score:2)
Monitoring parolees released from prison by an app on their smartphone sounds like a good idea, right?
Right. Because where a smartphone is, its owner must be. Hush now with your foolish ideas of a second phone.
Read the article [Re:Good idea?] (Score:3)
Monitoring parolees released from prison by an app on their smartphone sounds like a good idea, right?
Right. Because where a smartphone is, its owner must be. Hush now with your foolish ideas of a second phone.
Read the article. The theory is that the phone requires the parolee to check in with biometrics at unpredictable intervals, even in the middle of the night, using biometrics to verify that it is actually is the parolee.
The practice is that is it sloppy, badly coded junk, with biometrics that randomly don't recognize the parolee, and that can wake you up to ten times an hour in the middle of the night... and, of course, there's no user support and no complaint desk.
One phone for the lazy (Score:2)
Re:No fourth amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
>"How this is not a violation of Constitutional rights?"
You mean the rights they lost as being convicted of a serious crime and having not completed their sentence yet? Parole is:
"the early release of a prisoner who agrees to abide by certain conditions [...] This differs greatly from amnesty or commutation of sentence in that parolees are still considered to be serving their sentences"
Only thing I see wrong with it is covert ambient recording, and that should be addressed. And that is more about protecting the rights of those around the convict.
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Where in the Constitution does it say you lose the guaranteed rights if you are convicted of a crime?
Of course, the real question here is "Is this done by a state or by the feds?". If it's done by the feds, then they are supposed to obey the Constitution. The states have a lot more leeway.
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>"Where in the Constitution does it say you lose the guaranteed rights if you are convicted of a crime?"
So you don't think it is Constitutional to incarcerate convicts?
Nobody said convicts serving sentences don't have some Constitutional rights, but they certainly do not have all the rights/freedoms they once had. Nothing this app does (outside of ambient sound recording) takes away MORE rights than incarceration.
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That they are allowed to get a job already changes the equation.
That they are forced to use an idiot tool that requires them to check in up to 6 times an hour (every 10 minutes) and then have that check in fail, you don't see that as a problem?
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Nobody said convicts serving sentences don't have some Constitutional rights, but they certainly do not have all the rights/freedoms they once had. Nothing this app does (outside of ambient sound recording) takes away MORE rights than incarceration.
Uhm, well, that's if the application is working correctly and is following industry standard coding practices. As noted in the article, it is setting off false alarms, and well, the whole being able to record incidental audio thing is illegal in many states, as you noted.
I remember in the last 15 years on Slashdot plenty of articles bawling about closed source code on breathalyzers that, when under auditor scrutiny, often provided false positives, and didn't have standardized error checking or even st
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To term is indentured servitude, a polite way of saying, you break the law as written according to the constitution and they can temporarily turn you into a slave who must obey, with in the limits of not being a cruel and unusual punishment. The problem with this is the term of parole, what if judges start handing out absolute maximum sentences for every crime, terms of imprisonment measured in decades, don't worry parole will have you out in a year and then your private life is the property of the monitori
Re: No fourth amendment? (Score:3)
You might want to read the 14th amendment, where you'll find that slavery was never outlawed in the US. Chattel slavery was, yes, but the writers of that amendment left in an exception for those convicted of a crime. So, yes, they have very few rights. Those on parole aren't done with their sentence - they are completing it outside of prison.
To pick a nit: (Score:2)
That's slavery being outlawed while preserving what we would call "hard labor" as a just punishment for convicts. All slavery is forced labor, but not all forced labor is slavery.
Not the Constitution, the Supreme Court (Score:2)
The decision is Katz v United States. It established the concept of the "expectation of privacy" as the measuring stick for what the state is allowed to do in re privacy and searches.
Downstream from that decision, courts have almost uniformly ruled that convicted felons have a diminished expectation of privacy. They are, therefore, granted less Constitutional protection against search and seizure than non-convicts.
There are various other unpleasant implications of Katz, but this is the one most directly im
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And where in the Constitution does it say you lose all your rights on incarceration?
You are OK with the "check in every 10 minutes" and the "we don't recognize your check in"?
Wait wait, wasn't there something about cruel and unusual punishment?
The fact that they are allowed to work (and not as prison slave labor) already changes how things are supposed to work.
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10 minutes seems a bit excessive for a manual check-in, but is it what is required? A technical problem with implementation doesn't make the principle invalid, it means there are bugs to quash.
Yes, but it isn't cruel or unusual to require a parolee to check in.
No, it doesn't. They are allowed to work while in prison and often paid a wage, so I don't see how or why working while on parole (which is usually a requi
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the app being buggy and not being properly coded is a large rights problem. the parolees have a right that evidence against them isn't falsified by shoddy coding of the app. the app obviously can't discern a good gps fix from a bad one. if you live in a high rise this can throw your position by several hundred meters.
in an even worse case the app will default back to cell location and that can place you miles away from where you actually were. a technically adept person can discern these jumps but parolee o
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the app being buggy and not being properly coded is a large rights problem
Exactly. An app like this can actually be beneficial to parolees, with background monitoring reducing/replacing contact with parole officers or law enforcement (contact which is often perceived as aggravating), but it needs to work properly and monitor only what is necessary. That goes for all apps, but since this one is mandatory for parolees, it's especially important to get it right, and to make sure there's proper oversight. The right answer to these issues isn't: "Perps have no rights, so suck it up
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the app being buggy and not being properly coded is a large rights problem. the parolees have a right that evidence against them isn't falsified by shoddy coding of the app. the app obviously can't discern a good gps fix from a bad one. if you live in a high rise this can throw your position by several hundred meters.
Explanation: GPS needs four satellites to get your exact location. If there are three satellites only, then your GPS knows that you are _on some line_. It can guess that you are on ground level. In your two floor home, that's good enough. In a high rise building, you might be 200m above ground, so this guess gives a very incorrect result.
Re: No fourth amendment? (Score:4, Funny)
That's got to be the most unusual EULA ever, with a different set of buttons: instead of Accept or Decline you get Wanna go home or Wanna go to prison
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Just because someone was convicted of a crime and is released on parole (which by the way means they behaved themselves enough in prison to be considered for parole, by the way) doesn't mean they all live alone, isolated, having no friends or family, and friends and family *do* have Constitutional rights and a right to privacy, and absolutely should not be subjected to
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If it's recording audio then it's monitoring everyone around the phone.
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Yes but these are about the constitutional rights of non offenders. Sure they can bug someones houes or hack their phone and put a recording app on it. But if the court gets wind of that , without constitutional authorization, the authorities are in a world of trouble.
Well thats the theory anyway, practice might leave something to be desired.
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Under federal law, only one party's consent is needed, with the argument being that the person on parole has consented as part of their parole agreement.
In two-party consent states, this app is problematic.
Re:No fourth amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
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>You can put a recorder app on your phone and do exactly the same thing.
Yes, you can. And depending on jurisdiction and environment, you'll be breaking the law in doing so.
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You can put a recorder app on your phone and do exactly the same thing.
Except that that's illegal in most states, and this is the government doing it, effectively.
In other words: if you are an ex-con, and visit my home with that tracker (for example, when you're working as a plumber), you are now effectively recording inside my home. Since the government compels you to do so, it is violating my 4th amendment rights.
Re:No fourth amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck are you talking about?
"The device also serves as a covert surveillance bug, with built-in potential to covertly record ambient audio from the phone, even in standby mode". I suppose you think that it magically records only the conversations of the criminal and ignores the surrounding conversations of everyone who just happens to be near to them. Perhaps people planning to exercise their 2nd amendment rights by buying a gun (which, as non-criminals who have never broken the law they are entitled to). Perhaps people who disagree with the government and can be targeted for it. It's almost as if you have completely forgotten what it means to be free.
The irony drips from your signature given that you'll give up your own rights in order to take away rights from someone else.
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From TFA: "In any other circumstance, a janky app would be a nuisance; one that’s capable of ambiently collecting audio without a user’s knowledge would be an alarming potential to infringe user privacy."
In other words, it would record what I say in case I'm somewhere near a felon on parole. Even if I don't associate with them at all, standing behind them in the checkout queue is enough to suddenly be under surveillance.
That's a pretty good way to establish blanket surveillance through the back
Re:No fourth amendment? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, your complaint is that you might be overheard in public. Meh.
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My complaint is that I might be recorded in public, by government agencies that may do so not only in one location but in many. We're not talking about an isolated occurrance that I might avoid by simply not going into certain places, The problem is that profiling becomes a reality due to the amount of data points available, this isn't just my store knowing that I buy doggy treats and condoms, with enough parolees you can basically create a pretty complete picture about every single person's habits.
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I usually just carry a clue-by-four with me for people like you. But my parole officer said that improving the average IQ of the population by liberal use of it on idiots is still illegal.
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The 4th amendment:
It applies only to unreasonable searches, thus the government says it's quite reasonable to make sure a parolee is abiding by release conditions and thus won't be an issue to society.
That's not to say the app might be against the law, or other sections of
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How this is not a violation of Constitutional rights?
How is prison not a violation of Constitutional rights?
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They are still on parole. Parole means they are still serving sentence, they're just not doing it in prison. If they don't want to abide by the conditions of the parole, they are welcome to serve out the rest of their sentence in prison, which is far more restrictive of their rights.
How is this a hard concept?
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The only thing wrong with this concept is what to do with inadvertence surveillance of the innocent in range of the parolee. Convicted felons (i.e. parolees) have only the rights afforded to them by the court - which, when incarcerated, are damn near zero rights - whereas a citizen has all rights except those specifically limited by federal or local law.
When summoned as a juror, I am obliged and honored to explore and discuss how long and how severely I can and should limit the rights of a convicted felon
No. Hellllll no. (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing wrong with this concept is [...] I am honored to explore and discuss how long and how severely I can and should limit the rights of a convicted felon to do anything other than eat, breath, grow old, and die, and whether or not to convict at all.
You are dangerous. You are a sociopath, if not a psychopath. Judging someone's fate should never be an honor.
I had to dig this out, from July 1941 [i.ibb.co] to explain why you so badly need help.
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There's an RAH for every occasion!
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Self-rightousness is intoxicating. I know, I enjoy it myself. It's a powerful feeling, to know that you are better than someone else - morally superior to them. You are Right, and they are Evil, and you prove you are Right by punishing them. The more suffering you inflict, the more rightous you feel... until you are running a lynch mob, pulling people from their homes and beating them to death, because they deserve it and you know you are doing the right thing.
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Don't worry. You can be made to commit a crime if necessary.