Sen. Cotton Pushes Prison Cellphone Jamming at Little Rock Roundtable; FCC to Vote on Final Rule Nov. 19
LITTLE ROCK, Pulaski County, Arkansas — U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton held a roundtable and press conference in Little Rock on Oct. 28 with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin to discuss the dangers of contraband cellphones in prisons and to push for congressional action.
Cotton has long championed the Cellphone Jamming Reform Act, which would allow state and local prisons to use cellphone jamming systems to block inmates' use of contraband phones. Carr announced at the event that the FCC will vote on a final rule at its Nov. 19 open meeting — which, according to the FCC's Oct. 28 announcement, would for the first time allow state and federal prisons and jails to jam contraband cellphones. Under the plan, the order would permit, but not require, state and local correctional facilities to jam the phones, with the rules taking formal effect after the commissioners' vote.
Cotton said contraband cellphones threaten everyone from law-abiding citizens to law enforcement officers, praised Carr for taking an important step toward blocking the dangerous devices, and urged Congress to pass his bill to write the effort into law. The FCC says thousands of contraband phones have flowed into prisons nationwide, and that inmates use them to order murders, coordinate violent gang activity, abuse children and aid criminal enterprises.
Source: GSM News
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：联邦参议员汤姆·科顿官方肖像（公共领域，Wikimedia Commons）。Official portrait of U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
