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Free Tablets used to 'steal' from Prisoners and Families...

psionandy

psionandy

Extreme Android User
Jpay has signed a contract with the New York Department of corrections to supply tablets to 52,000 inmates, for free. Jpay is pursuing a platform strategy: give something away that locks in users, then charge over the odds for services built on the platform. Except in this case, the users are literally locked in, behind bars.

How will Jpay make money on the carceral platform strategy? By charging $0.35 for "electronic postage stamps" to use the prisoners' messaging service, a fake, hobbled version of email that lets prisoners contact their loved ones. By gouging on financial fees -- jacking the cost of sending money to an incarcerated loved one from $0.10 to $3.15-$4.15. Prisoners who have a positive balance in their accounts when they get released don't get cash refunds -- they get predatory debit cards that charge outrageous fees (including a fee just to check the balance!). Also: gouging for ebooks, videos, and music.


https://boingboing.net/2018/07/29/captive-audience-2.html
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/07/24/no-cost-contract/
 
Sounds like the racket that funs my son's school lunch program. MySchoolBucks. The only way he can buy lunch is with their payment method. It costs $3.00 to recharge with your debit card, even if you set it up to autofill. They get mad at me because I will only send a check thus avoiding all of their predatory fees. :mad:
 
Sounds like Horse Shit to me,
I had a " Buddy " who wanted to have me hack one of these up and see if we can force a nand dump and find a way to exploit the security to gain root access to the internals.

I declined as it was going to require someone who just got out of prison to send me a Jpay-Tablet through the mail. I don't want my mailing address handed out to Con's.

But I would like to see one of those tablets.....
:)
 
In hindsight it my not be all about profit gain but a Trojan horse in gathering information from unsuspecting prisoners. That program maybe spearheaded to help LEO in solving unsolved crimes and cold cases while at the same time appearing to be a legitimate program in helping prisoners Rehabilitation. But remember people are creatures of habit and when they get comfortable and feel that they are not being watched or monitored, they tend to do what comes naturally. Give a person enough rope and they will hang themselves in the end.
 
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@KBU2 Exactly About What I was thinking... Just never said it.
And Who's to say that once it connects to your network it isn't monitoring packets over ARP replay or something.
Yes I'm Paranoid... But all the best " Cough Cough" Developers are . LoL
 
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