Federal Prisons’ Switch to Scanning Mail Is a Surveillance Nightmare

Illustration: Dilek Baykara. Article by Lauren Gill. The Intercept – September 26, 2021.

The Bureau of Prisons has piloted a program that can give authorities “huge secret intelligence into the public sender of postal mail.”

In a Pennsylvania federal prison, Joe used to trace his girlfriend’s handwriting with his finger as the faint smell of her perfume wafted into his cell. Her letters elicited rare feelings of intimacy in an otherwise cold environment. But after his facility, United States Penitentiary Canaan, replaced physical mail with photocopies in 2019, those feelings have disappeared. […]

Click here to view original web page at theintercept.com