“(Are we) going to stop crime before it happens because we’re thinking about every speech and incarceration?” Kendrick says. “I think this is one of the many situations where technology is way ahead of the law.”
The focus of the tool is “not to monitor or target specific individuals, but rather to identify broader patterns, anomalies and illegal behavior throughout the communications system,” a spokesperson for Security said. His job, he added, is to make surveillance more efficient amid staff shortages, “not surveying people for no reason.”
Secours will have an easier time funding its AI tool thanks to the company’s recent win in a battle with regulators over how telecom companies can spend money collected from inmate calls.
In 2024, the Federal Communications Commission issued a major reform by prisoners’ rights advocates, barring telecoms from approving the costs of recording and monitoring prisoners. The companies were allowed to charge inmates a limited rate for calls, but jails and prisons were ordered to cover most of their budgets for security costs.
Negative reactions to this change were swift. Sheriffs’ associations (which typically run county jails) complained that they could no longer afford to adequately monitor the calls, and attorneys general from 14 states Filed a case Some jails and prisons warned that they would end access to phone calls following the ruling.
While it was building and piloting its AI tool, Secours held meetings with the FCC and Lobed for a rule change, arguing that the 2024 reform went too far and asking that the agency again allow companies to use fees collected from inmates to pay for security.
In June, Brendan Carr, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the FCC, said she would postpone all deadlines for prisons and jails to adopt the 2024 reforms, and even hinted that the agency wants to help fund its AI surveillance efforts with fees paid by inmates to telecom companies. In a press release, Kerr It is written Repeal of the 2024 reform would “lead to broader adoption of beneficial public safety tools including advanced AI and machine learning.”
On October 28, the agency went further: I.T Voted Pass new, higher rate caps and allow companies like Secours to absorb security costs related to recording and monitoring calls — such as storing recordings, transcribing them, or building AI tools to analyze such calls, for example on inmates. Secours spokesperson said MIT Technology Review The company’s goal is to balance affordability with the need to fund necessary safety and security tools. “These tools, including our advanced monitoring and AI capabilities, are fundamental to maintaining safe facilities for inmates and correctional staff and protecting the public,” he wrote.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez disputed last month’s decision. “Law enforcement,” he wrote in one statement“Irrelevant security and safety costs should foot the bill, not the families of the incarcerated.”
The FCC will comment on these new rules before they become final.