FCC inmate calling service (ICS) reporting and disclosure requirements were approved by the Office of Management and Budget Jan. 9 for three years, said a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. It said the commission ordered providers to file annual reports and certifications on their ICS rates and minutes of use by facility, ancillary service charges and any site commission payments to correctional authorities, and to inform customers of their rates and charges. OMB also approved a one-time FCC requirement that ICS providers submit cost and demand data on their interstate, international and intrastate services, the notice said. Responses were due Wednesday. The commission says it needs all the data to help ensure that ICS rates and fees are "just and reasonable" as required by law. The FCC and providers Securus Technologies and Global Tel*Link didn't comment on the timing of the FR notice and the response deadline.
The FCC appears poised to take on contraband cellphones in prisons in an NPRM at the March 23 commissioners’ meeting, industry officials said Wednesday. The focus is in keeping with Chairman Ajit Pai’s complaints last year about the lack of progress on the issue. Wireless industry officials raised concerns that a focus on contraband cellphones could open up a debate on whether to legalize jammers as one solution. Industry officials said they understand Pai wants to make contraband cellphones one of his “signature” issues. The FCC declined to comment.
The Human Rights Defense Center urged an FCC probe and action in light of "corruption involving Global Tel*Link, the country's largest provider of Inmate Calling Services (ICS), and others as alleged" by Mississippi's attorney general. HRDC noted its prior filings on a GTL paid consultant charged in federal court with bribing a Mississippi correctional official to retain the company as the state's sole ICS provider. The consultant pled guilty, agreed to a $200,000 forfeiture, was fined $100,000 and sentenced to five years in prison, the inmate advocacy group said in a filing Thursday in docket 12-375. It said Mississippi's AG filed a civil action Feb. 8 against GTL, the consultant and the Mississippi correctional official alleging "one of the largest and longest running criminal and civil conspiracies in Mississippi government history," including "bribery, kickbacks, misrepresentation, fraud, concealment, money laundering and wrongful conduct." GTL allegedly "paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in so-called 'consulting fees,'" which "were used to pay bribes and kickbacks" to the Mississippi correctional official, HRDC wrote. ICS providers "actively resist legitimate public records requests for documents," HRDC wrote. "This case is typical of prison corruption cases in that the corruption is rarely if ever detected by audits, contract reviews or any other purported 'checks and balances' systems. The FCC should develop stringent requirements for transparency within the ICS industry to detect and deter corruption of this nature." The group asked the FCC to use its subpoena power to investigate ICS provider "consultant" lobbying for exclusive contracts, and at a minimum, require all providers to identify all paid consultants and compensation. GTL didn't comment Friday.
Global Tel*Link gave the FCC an overview of its "managed access systems" (MAS) in correctional facilities. GTL shared details about "ongoing challenges the industry faces with this type of deployment," said a company filing posted Thursday in docket 12-375 on a meeting with Chairman Ajit Pai and an aide. "GTL also shared some of the solutions it is using in place of MAS such as TSA-style security, vision screening technologies, and other investigative tools that provide correctional facilities more comprehensive security and law enforcement intelligence for managing their facilities." Representatives discussed the "deployment and use of tablets in correctional facilities, and how such deployment can reduce the use of contraband cell phones in correctional facilities," the filing said. "Its tablets use a private managed network, which ensures correctional facility security protocols are followed, such as the ability to monitor communications and control inmate access to information." The tablets let inmates use a "variety of content useful to the inmate while incarcerated and after release," said the firm.
Global Tel*Link gave the FCC an overview of its "managed access systems" (MAS) in correctional facilities. GTL shared details about "ongoing challenges the industry faces with this type of deployment," said a company filing posted Thursday in docket 12-375 on a meeting with Chairman Ajit Pai and an aide. "GTL also shared some of the solutions it is using in place of MAS such as TSA-style security, vision screening technologies, and other investigative tools that provide correctional facilities more comprehensive security and law enforcement intelligence for managing their facilities." Representatives discussed the "deployment and use of tablets in correctional facilities, and how such deployment can reduce the use of contraband cell phones in correctional facilities," the filing said. "Its tablets use a private managed network, which ensures correctional facility security protocols are followed, such as the ability to monitor communications and control inmate access to information." The tablets let inmates use a "variety of content useful to the inmate while incarcerated and after release," said the firm.
Federal judges questioned the sustainability of FCC inmate calling service regulations contained in a 2015 order that limited ICS rates and charges, major parts of which the new Republican-run commission is no longer defending. Citing the agency's shift, Judge Laurence Silberman seemed skeptical about the legal justification for much of the order, and Judge Harry Edwards also raised some doubts, while Judge Cornelia Pillard hypothesized the panel could still uphold the order. The three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit pressed litigants to clarify what they wanted their panel to do about the case, Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461, as they struggled to sort out various complexities in oral argument Monday that ran 90 minutes, after being scheduled for 40 minutes.
DOJ said it would defer to the FCC's decision not to defend intrastate rate caps in a 2015 inmate calling services order set for oral argument Monday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The department also deferred to the commission decision not to defend any arguments that the regulator lawfully considered industrywide averages in setting the order's rate caps, which included interstate rate caps. "The United States, however, continues to join the Commission's defense of 'the significant remaining portions of the Order,'" said a DOJ letter (in Pacer) Thursday in Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461, citing language from an FCC letter Tuesday (see 1701310061).
The GOP-run FCC said it won't defend inmate calling service intrastate rate caps that the previous Democratic majority instituted, but will continue to defend most other parts of a recent ICS order being challenged in court. It said it would cede some time at Monday's oral argument to an inmate family advocate to defend all aspects of the order.
Global Tel*Link urged the new FCC to ask a court to hold an inmate calling service case in abeyance due to the change in commission leadership, said the ICS provider's filings Thursday in docket 12-375 on meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Michael O'Rielly. A split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided Jan. 18 to proceed with its review and set Feb. 6 oral argument on petitioner challenges to the commission's ICS rate caps, fee restrictions and other decisions in Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461 (see 1701180026). Previous abeyance requests of ICS provider, state and sheriff petitioners were opposed by the Democratic-run FCC and DOJ, but they're now under Republican control. In dissenting from the Jan. 18 panel order, Judge Laurence Silberman said he wouldn't be surprised if the new FCC "changes its position and we had to cancel the Feb. 6 oral argument."
An FCC inmate calling service case will proceed as scheduled with Feb. 6 oral argument, ruled a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in an order (in Pacer) Wednesday, with Judges Cornelia Pillard and Harry Edwards in the majority. Judge Laurence Silberman dissented, labeling "silly" a counsel's argument that a change in the FCC's position was only "hypothetical," given the looming agency takeover by Republican commissioners who dissented on ICS decisions. The FCC and DOJ had said the case shouldn't be held in abeyance, while most ICS providers and state and local officials said it should be to give Republican commissioners time to consider their course (see 1701170046). The Wright Petitioners also asked the appellate court not to hold the case in abeyance, arguing that some intervenors are plaintiffs in a lower-court class-action lawsuit that has been in abeyance since 2001. In that case, a District Court referred questions on both inter- and intrastate ICS calls to the commission, but the agency took over 15 years to answer, the inmate family advocacy group told the D.C. Circuit, which recently asked parties to show cause why its review shouldn't be delayed given the FCC changes. "Delaying resolution of these important issues would subject the class action plaintiffs to an additional and indefinite delay in obtaining relief from the excessively high cost of calls to and from prisons," said the group's response (in Pacer) Tuesday in Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461.