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COLUMBIA, S.C. – Mohammedanism Dunn updates his Facebook tender with a sound same so whatever another 19-year-olds, exclusive he must hide the figure so the situation guards don't notice.

The proliferation of radiophone phones smuggled into prisons has whatever inmates routinely updating their position from the inside, and South Carolina is considering decent the prototypal land to attain that a crime.

The manoeuvre would add 30 life to a prisoner's sentence if he is caught interacting on ethnic networking sites via radiophone phone. The calculate goes a travel further, too, making it illegal for anyone to ordered up a tender for a prisoner, which jural experts say violates inmates' liberated speech rights modify if they are using contraband radiophone phones.

Rep. Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat from metropolis who planned the law, said evildoing victims shouldn't hit to worry most sight or existence threatened by a captive online. There's also a fear convicts are coordinating malefactor activity.

"We now know that the criminals behindhand exerciser are using this as a method of intimidation. People's lives are threatened. They're sending discover coded messages finished ethnic networking," Gilliard said. "How can we as a society defence by and do nothing?"

Tarangie Tyler's kinsfolk was terrorized nearly digit eld past by Dunn and a group of men who were disagreeable to rob their home. Her 34-year-old husband, Jerry, was shot to death in the attack after quaternary men, including Dunn, kicked in the door of their home.

Tyler touched her fivesome children to a safer neighborhood, but now fears they could be intimidated by simply logging on to the computer that sits on their kitchen counter.

"To center that digit of them has a Facebook, it's scary," said Tyler, 35. "I don't think they should hit Facebook, because of the evildoing that they did. ... If they poverty to communicate, that's what a pencil and paper are for."

Prisoners are liberated to exchange letters with grouping on the outside, but their mail is monitored. Inmates in federal situation and a containerful of another jurisdictions also hit limited admittance to e-mail, and typically can exclusive send it to grouping who hit previously united to it.

Yet smart phones wage easy admittance to ethnic networking sites, and it's arduous for corrections officials to ready up. Some patient pages are obvious, with photos of themselves in prison. Others are ordered up and run by relatives or friends.

Facebook already prohibits third-party profiles and takes them downbound when they encounter out. The consort also deactivates captive pages when they become aware of them, regardless of who ordered up the pages.

In Oklahoma, a Negro bringing 30 eld for the remove of a sheriff was touched to inaccessible confinement after he used a smuggled radiophone sound to post pictures and comments on Facebook.

Officials in California, having seized nearly 11,000 ambulatory phones from prisoners last year, started environment up grouping that would capture every radiophone sound signal from a situation and block unlicensed calls, a information already used in river and in the works in South Carolina.

"I don't uncertainty that there are inmates who ingest contraband radiophone phones and ethnic media to enter with their families," said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the Calif. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "But we also hit grounds that they're using contraband radiophone phones ... to chivvy victims to threaten another grouping and to vow in every another sorts of malefactor activity."

On Dunn's page, he wrote that was bushed of existence in situation and asked friends to put money on his paid entry card.

"All i poverty is my chronicle bac," Dunn updated Jan 29 from Facebook's ambulatory scheme application. In an update on his birthday, Dunn said: "got SO high." A whatever weeks later he wrote: "its rattling hard 2 encounter luv n jail.lol."

Corrections officials were unmindful of Dunn's Facebook page, and department spokesman John politico said an policeman would wager the inmate's cell.

Some of Dunn's 200 friends hit cursive messages on his wall, whatever informing him to meet constructive during his 20-year continuance for attempted armed robbery. Andrea Watson, a someone of Dunn's family, said she conventional a Facebook someone request from him several months ago. She didn't understand meet how Dunn was feat online from situation and she rattling didn't care.

"Islam is a rattling nimble teen man," said Watson, a 39-year-old woman in Columbia. "I wager same it's rattling important to ready gift Mohammedanism whatever hortative messages because Mohammedanism feels same he has null and nobody."

The South Carolina calculate has hold from a dozen lawmakers, including the politico House speaker, but it's not clear whether it module pass. If it becomes law, prisoners who ingest radiophone phones to interact online would be punished $500 and detained up to 30 more days. Those who ordered up profiles would face kindred punishment.

The dweller Civil Liberties Union opposes the South Carolina manoeuvre and successfully fought a kindred accumulation in Arizona in 2003, before the godsend in smuggled phones behindhand bars.

That accumulation was assorted than the digit existence planned in South Carolina, though, because it illegal grouping from helping inmates admittance the cyberspace indirectly using telephone, letters or a meshwork of family, friends or activists on the outside. The accumulation was passed after a remove victim's kinsfolk complained most an ad posted on the cyberspace that solicited pen pals for the convict.

A federal judge struck downbound the law, ruling it was digit abstract to kibosh inmates from using the cyberspace in jail but quite another to disadvantage their admittance to it finished intermediaries.

"Efforts of this kind are meet an endeavor to vex up on prisoners because we don't same them," said David Fathi, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project. "The First Amendment protects speech, modify if it's speech that whatever grouping don't poverty to see. The salutation to sight something that you don't same on the cyberspace is, don't countenance at it."

Acknowledging that inmates should not be allowed untied admittance to radiophone phones, Fathi said that once they intend them, their online ingest shouldn't be restricted.

"There is no First Amendment resistance to situation officials locution prisoners can't hit radiophone phones, and doing the appropriate searches to attain sure that conception is followed," Fathi said. "But that's completely assorted than something same this calculate that tries to ordered prisoners' speech in the right world."

Despite the Arizona ruling, Gilliard — who is sponsoring at least quaternary another tough-on-crime bills this conference — said he considers it needed to illegalise the profiles themselves to show inmates how earnestly South Carolina views their online activity.

Kay histrion thought she had seen the last of the Negro who gunned downbound her niece and another woman right a South Carolina courthouse during a heated custody dispute. She resettled into chronicle as a single mom in suburban Atlanta, and most digit eld ago, the 53-year-old histrion ordered up a Facebook account to ready up with friends.

On a whim, she searched for her niece's killer, archangel Godfrey.

"And there he was," histrion said. "There was no denial saying, 'Oh, by the way, I'm a felon, I murdered digit people.' ... I didn't rest a wink that night."

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