Hack securus

Yet The Intercept reported Wednesday that a massive hack, compromising over 70 million calls in 37 states over two and a half years, shows that Securus is not only recording attorney-client calls, but that the company's "secure" recording and storage systems are, in fact, porous.

By recording privileged calls with lawyers, Securus may have violated prisoners' constitutional rights. The Intercept's Jordan Smith and Micah Lee identified 14, calls that prisoners made to their attorneys between winter and spring , but this figure only covers calls to publicly listed lawyers' phone numbers.

Calls to unlisted numbers, such as cell phones, are not included, although they could still be covered by attorney-client privilege. Securus' phones, they said, "are supposed to be set up to allow certain phone numbers to be logged and flagged so that calls to those numbers are exempt from being recorded -- let alone stored. Securus said in a statement Wednesday evening that it had contacted law enforcement regarding the leak. Securus was also hacked in , Smith and Lee reported.

It appears that someone accessed three calls placed by Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots player and convicted murderer. The burden is on the inmate to prove that such improperly recorded calls were also accessed by a prosecutor and then resulted directly in some kind of damage to the inmate for instance, a longer sentence.

But as The Intercept article explains, prosecutors are not always forthcoming about accessing such calls. A Securus Press Release from October seems like it was published in order for Securus to make it clear to its government agency clients that it tried to keep the commission system alive. This quote suggests that money from the overcharges benefits the prisoners, in the long run. But this raised even more questions in my mind.

As addressed in the interview with Alex Friedmann, it turns out that the budgets these overcharges go into have little or no government oversight, be they at the Local Municipal , State, or Federal level. Prison Legal News has reported on criminal justice-related issues since and is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center. What were your first impressions, when you read about the upload? Nor was it surprising that they were apparently recording attorney-inmate calls.

There are already some lawsuits in Texas and other places over these issues. Although the volume of recorded calls was somewhat surprising. Really, the most surprising thing was that somebody actually cared enough to release the records. That was rare, that someone decided this was an issue, and decided to do it, and did it.

Storing such sensitive data insecurely is a privacy violation. Much in the same way that Target was responsible when all the private data of its customers was released, due to not being properly protected. Could you explain why you think that it would be hard for an inmate to show they were harmed by these calls being merely recorded?

Alex: Okay. So the onus is on the prisoner to prove that 1 the call was accessed by a prosecutor and 2 that the prosecutor acted on the information that was heard in those phone calls , and then used that information in some way harmful to the prisoner.

Alex: Yes. But they would have to show injury. Though there can be injury in the form of chilling their right of access to counsel, if they know that calls to their attorneys are being recorded. Lisa: So, moving forward, post-upload.

Alex: Correct. Alex: Well, yes. And a hack of Securus was also the basis for a previous investigation from The Intercept , which included 70 million prisoner phone calls.

But this latest data breach is not the only sign that Securus is careless with sensitive information. Rid pointed Motherboard to a Securus user manual available online.

One part shows a map and user interface for a Securus product, but instead of populating the screen with fake data for demonstration purposes, the guide appears to include the real name, address, and phone number of a specific woman. Motherboard confirmed the details with those in online databases, as well as a media report that mentions the woman. Update: This piece has been updated to include extra context around another Securus data breach reported by The Intercept, and more information from a Securus statement.

Sign In Create Account. A hacker has provided Motherboard with the login details for a company that buys phone location data from major telecom companies and then sells it to law enforcement.