The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Monitoring Online Purchases of Inmates’ Family and Friends

Prison wardens and detention center administrators have, for years, faced what they believe to be a serious problem. While they can surveill every aspect of the lives of the people imprisoned in their facilities, they typically have no ability to violate the privacy and civil liberties of the friends and family of incarcerated people. Fortunately for prison administrators, Securus has a solution. 

Securus is one of the prison telecommunications companies notable for overcharging inmates for the privilege of communication with their loved ones. They have filed a patent application describing a method of “linking controlled-environment facility residents and associated non-resident telephone numbers to … e-commerce accounts associated with the captured telephone number” and “information about purchases made by a non-resident associated with the accessed e-commerce account.”   

In other words, Securus wants to capture the phone numbers of everyone a prisoner talks to, including friends and family, and use that information to scrutinize their e-commerce purchases. 

In their patent application, Securus provides the following example of how prisons might use this invasive and dangerous technology. 

The flowchart submitted with the patent describing how the e-commerce surveillance system would work. 

“[I]nmate call records may show that an inmate made calls to their girlfriend before escaping. Investigators question the girlfriend, but she provides no help. However, investigators employ embodiments of the present systems and methods, using the DTN [Dialed Telephone Number] used by the inmate to call the girlfriend, to find that the girlfriend had

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