FC: California court upholds prison e-mail ban -- even for printouts

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 12:06:18 -0800
To: declan () well com
From: Wulf Losee <wlosee () cisco com>
Subject: prison e-mail ban upheld

Declan:
Your readers might be interested by a California appellate ruling that 
blocks inmate's rights to receive e-mail, even when it's printed and sent 
via snail-mail. One of the quotes I find most interesting is: "The court 
cited testimony by a police detective who claimed that 'ascertaining the 
source of e-mail messages can be difficult because senders can hide or 
disguise their identity more easily than can those who send regular 
mail.'"  Huh?!?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16737.html

Prison e-mail ban upheld
By: Kevin Poulsen
Posted: 08/02/2001 at 03:32 GMT

Officials at California's most notorious prison won the right to block 
inmates from receiving printed e-mail messages though the regular US mail, 
in a ruling by a state appeals court Tuesday.

"We conclude that given the unique characteristics of e-mail, the ban on 
receipt by regular mail of Internet-generated material was neither 
arbitrary nor irrational and was logically related to the prison's 
legitimate security concerns," reads the decision by the California Court 
of Appeal, First Appellate District, overturning a lower court ruling.

The appellate ruling settled a First Amendment suit filed by inmate Aaron 
Collins, a lifer at the maximum security Pelican Bay State Prison. Collins 
is one of nearly 300 subscribers nationwide to a service called INMATE 
Classified, which specializes in providing prisoners with a limited 
Internet presence, hosting inmate's personal Web pages and forwarding them 
hard copies of any e-mail sent to their inmate.com address.

....
********************************************************
Wulf Losee
Technical Marketing Engineer
        email: wulf () cisco com
vox: 408.525.1493     cell: 408.406.4914
fax: 408.526.7043     page: 800.365.4578
********************************************************





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