Thread by @BiancaTylek

THREAD 🧵 This game-changing legislation just introduced in NYC has been a long time in the works and has the potential to revolutionize correctional telecom by reversing its invasive reach into our privacy and uprooting the underlying justification for its egregious prices.

https://twitter.com/worthrises/status/1803836286878331068

This effort dates back to 2018, when we passed another first-of-its-kind bill in NYC that made all jail calls free and spurred a nationwide movement for free correctional communication. During the hearing, councilmembers began asking about the surveillance of jail calls.

A key concern emerged around the universal monitoring of jail calls: Was it fair that only people detained pretrial, many of whom simply couldn’t afford bail, were being surveilled, thus hindering their ability to participate in their own defense, and not those who were released?

Note: NYC did not begin the universal monitoring and recording of all jail calls until just 2008. When it did, the rationale was simply that everyone else was doing it. And if the city didn’t have to bear the cost, because families were paying for calls, why not?

The City Council's concerns came to fruition quickly. A 2021 audit revealed that over 1,500 calls between 400 people awaiting trial and their attorneys were illegally recorded by the city’s jail telecom vendor, and many handed over to prosecutors.
nydailynews.com/2021/03/20/ove…

It’s far from shocking as the city’s jail telecom vendor, Securus, which owns over 40% of the nation’s correctional telecom market, has been sued at least 10 times for similar violations in other jurisdictions, from California to Maine. 
vice.com/en/article/7kb…

Worse yet, in recent years, the city’s corrections department, like many across the country, has partnered with Securus to quietly expand the surveillance measures deployed over jail calls, including the collection of biometric data like voice prints.

Securus is developing databases from the data collected in its contracted facilities to sell to law enforcement agencies. Thus, the biometric data of incarcerated people is retained long after their release, so is the data of the loved ones they speak to.
theintercept.com/2019/01/30/pri…

A recent lawsuit brought by a coalition of NYC public defenders details the expansive reach of this surveillance apparatus and its disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities, which make up more than 90% of the city’s jail population.
nydailynews.com/2024/04/16/mil…

And this isn’t just about NYC, because while the city has free jail calls, correctional telecoms like Securus use their surveillance tools to justify the exorbitant rates they charge in other places. This bill can undermine a core tenet of the industry’s pricing model.

Readying to release new regs in response to the Martha Wright Reed Act, the FCC is contending with how much of the cost of these surveillance tools vendors can recoup through call rates. We argue none. Consumers should not pay for services that harm them. cbsnews.com/news/prison-ca…

Note: Correctional telecom began as a myriad of small surveillance firms no one would pay for. It wasn’t until they provided telecom services after the AT&T monopoly breakup in 1984 and shifted the cost of their surveillance tools onto families that they managed to make money.

Today’s introduction of the End Correctional Community Surveillance (ECCoS) Act undermines the industry’s argument that surveillance is necessary to the provision of correctional telecom. It is not. It is a prosecutorial tool that has nothing to do with facility security.

It’s time that we reprioritize and uphold our constitutional right to privacy. From privileged attorney-client calls to intimate conversations between spouses, all jail calls should be protected from warrantless surveillance. ECCoS will do just that.
worthrises.org/blogpost/only-…

Thank you to City Councilmembers @GaleBrewerNYC and @dr_yusefsalaam for leading on this initiative and all of our partners: @BklynDefender @BronxDefenders @LegalAidNYC @MHPUJC and NY County Defender Services.