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Canada Wants to Jam Prison Cell Phones So Inmates Can't Run Drug Cartels

Drug dealers in the clink love their smartphones, too.
Inside shot of an American prison. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Canada, like many countries, has a prison contraband problem. Its inmates are sneaking in cell phones at an increasing rate, so, to stop them from running crime rings from the inside, the country is thinking about using cell phone jammers in its correctional facilities.

Documents obtained by Motherboard under the Access to Information Act suggest Correctional Service Canada looked into the use of cell phone jamming technologies in March 2012, after the agency reported over 200 illegal cell phones being confiscated from federal prisons in three years.

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Screenshot of one of the documents obtained by Motherboard.

"The number of contraband cell phones that CSC seizes continues to increase," the documents, which were intended as briefing notes for the Minister of Public Safety, said.

CSC was particularly concerned about controlling inmates' communication to the outside world. That's easy to control from the constantly surveilled internal prison phone lines, but a lot harder if contraband cell phones are snuck in to prisons.

"As you are aware, access to a cell phone provides inmates the continuous potential to be involved in criminal activities outside the institution—including drug trafficking and organized crime activities—from within an institution," said the documents. "Cell phones allow inmates to completely and continuously circumvent CSC's system."

In April, Reuters reported that contraband cell phones are on the rise in US jails with inmates similarly using them to coordinate drug deals and escapes. According to the same ministerial documents New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, France, and Mexico have all used cell phone jammers in some of their prisons.

With cell phones, and especially smartphones, Canadian inmates were being given "unfettered access to the internet and social media sites" that let them touch base with the online free world.

The number of contraband cell phones that CSC seizes continues to increase

But potential jamming technologies would also raise some serious concerns on the outside.

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Cell phone jammers can interrupt the communication of bees, could be powerful enough to disrupt nearby public services like police, firefighters, and ambulances, and could interfere "in national security investigations being carried out by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police," the documents said.

Heavily redacted sections of a document obtained by Motherboard.

Extensive government redactions within the documents provided to Motherboard make it impossible to know whether Canada ever actually started using cell phone jammers in prisons. Strict laws in Canada already make it illegal for civilians to use cell jammers, while even federal agencies are required to obtain special dispensation under the Radiocommunications Act to use one.

I reached out to CSC to see if it has since used cell jamming technologies in federal prisons, and the government agency wouldn't say.

"CSC continues to work with service providers and other criminal justice system partners to monitor advancements in the field of detection of illicit cell phone usage," a spokesperson said to me in an email. "CSC constantly evaluates security equipment and procedures to ensure a safe and secure environment."

The spokesperson said the documents in question were part of a request for information to "assess the marketplace" for solutions against contraband wireless communication devices inside federal prisons.

Whether or not those solutions involve cell jammers, Canadian officials should take note of the the failure of the same technology used in Brazilian jails. Law enforcement agents couldn't jam the full cell phone spectrum in certain prisons and inmates found the "shadows" within cell coverage to continue their criminal activities from jail.

In the end, like criminals have been doing for time immemorial, they'll probably figure out a new way to circumvent any cell jamming technologies within Canadian prisons—they're already using drones, after all.