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Cellphone jamming system tested at Maryland prison
Source: Associated Press
Cellphone jamming system tested at Maryland prison
By MEG KINNARD
15 minutes ago
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Federal prisons officials on Wednesday tested a jamming technology inside the walls of a federal prison, a rare move that authorities said they hope will help combat the danger posed by inmates with cellphones.
The test was conducted over several hours Wednesday morning at a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland, Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams told The Associated Press as the testing took place. Williams didn’t give specifics of how the test worked but said it marks a step in the fight to cut down on inmates’ ability to communicate unsupervised and carry on with criminal efforts.
Similar tests occurred in 2010, but Williams said Wednesday’s effort was significant because jamming technology has evolved, as have inmates’ efforts to smuggle in the devices. Such tests, she said, could lead to the broader use of technologies like jamming inside prisons to immobilize inmate phones, which officials across the country have described as their No. 1 security threat.
“Today is a big step, and the reason really is that, as criminals increase their capacity to commit crimes behind bars, we have to increase our capacity to stop them,” Williams told AP.
The renewed interest in jamming within federal facilities follows an announcement by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who told a national meeting of corrections officials that federal prisons would start testing the technology anew.
-snip-
By MEG KINNARD
15 minutes ago
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Federal prisons officials on Wednesday tested a jamming technology inside the walls of a federal prison, a rare move that authorities said they hope will help combat the danger posed by inmates with cellphones.
The test was conducted over several hours Wednesday morning at a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland, Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams told The Associated Press as the testing took place. Williams didn’t give specifics of how the test worked but said it marks a step in the fight to cut down on inmates’ ability to communicate unsupervised and carry on with criminal efforts.
Similar tests occurred in 2010, but Williams said Wednesday’s effort was significant because jamming technology has evolved, as have inmates’ efforts to smuggle in the devices. Such tests, she said, could lead to the broader use of technologies like jamming inside prisons to immobilize inmate phones, which officials across the country have described as their No. 1 security threat.
“Today is a big step, and the reason really is that, as criminals increase their capacity to commit crimes behind bars, we have to increase our capacity to stop them,” Williams told AP.
The renewed interest in jamming within federal facilities follows an announcement by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who told a national meeting of corrections officials that federal prisons would start testing the technology anew.
-snip-
Read more: https://apnews.com/77a7408703894478afd320d48e0733bb/Cellphone-jamming-system-tested-at-Maryland-prison
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