South Carolina Says It's A Felony For Prisoners To Look At Facebook; Sends Many To Solitary Confinementby Mike MasnickTechdirt Feb. 13, 2015 |
AP: 'Israeli Strikes on Gaza City of Rafah Kill 22, Mostly Children, as U.S. Advances Aid Package'
Sen. Hawley: Send National Guard to Crush Pro-Palestine Protests Like 'Eisenhower Sent the 101st to Little Rock'
John Podhoretz Demands National Guard Be Sent Into Columbia U to Put Down Pro-Palestine Protests
House Passes $95B Foreign Aid Giveaway to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, Combined With TikTok Ban
Senate Passes FISA Spying Bill, Includes New Measure to Turn U.S. Businesses Into NSA Spies
Dave Maass, over at EFF, has an absolutely insane story about how the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) added a special new level 1 felony charge (for reference: murder, rape, rioting and hostage-taking are all level 1 felonies) for... using a social network while in prison. Yes, these individuals are already prisoners, but this draconian law and even more draconian enforcement means that hundreds of South Carolina prisons are facing extended sentences and long stays in solitary confinement for... posting to their Facebook page. And that's not an exaggeration: Why so harsh? The SCDC says that it's a separate felony for each day that an inmate uses a social media site (oddly, you can do as much as you want in a single day and it's just a single felony -- but new day, new felony). And, of course, "social media" is defined broadly as well: There's a lot more to Maass's article, and it's well worth reading. He also takes Facebook to task for helping the SCDC takedown prisoners' Facebook profiles. Facebook has set up an easy form, which can lead to widespread abuse, and it doesn't appear that Facebook does much, if anything, to check to see if the accounts actually abuse the company's terms of service. There are lots of problems with the criminal justice and prison systems in the US, and there may be legitimate reasons to limit access to social media for prisoners (though that seems like a stretch in many cases). But to make it an additional felony and to lock up people for years because of it? How is that not cruel and unusual punishment? |