This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the House of Representatives just gave a big no-no for the use of mobile phones in prisons. Any prisoner in the United States is not allowed to have a device that accesses any wireless services according to bill S. 1749, or the Cell Phone Contraband Act. I guess Lindsay Lohan isn’t going to be using BBM to keep in touch with anyone while she serves her time.
Here is a brief summary of the bill that passed:
Cell Phone Contraband Act of 2010 – Amends the federal criminal code to include a phone or other device provided by a commercial mobile service as a “prohibited object” the provision of which to, or the possession of which by, a federal prisoner is prohibited.Directs the Comptroller General to submit a report to Congress within 90 days after the enactment of this Act on a study of:
(1) telephone rates within state and federal prisons and jails, to include information on interstate, intrastate, and collect calls made by prisoners;
(2) state and federal efforts to prevent the smuggling of cell phones and other wireless devices into prisons and jails; and
(3) cell phone use by inmates.
So if you were planning on baking a cake with a Droid X or HTC EVO 4G in it for your homies that are locked up in the pen right now, you can forget about it. Perhaps try some smoke signals and hope they can see out of their windows. Or try whistling or clanking metal in morse code.
[Via: PhoneScoop and OpenCongress]