Tiny Phones That Go Inside a Butt (2016)

[ourmandave]

The article is about sneaking phones (and chargers) into prisons and all the things around that.

Obviously it's possible to get reasonably large items up your bottom, otherwise fisting wouldn't be such a popular hobby, but for the purposes of easy storage and retrieval, you're going to want to go as small as possible.

Look, I've had plenty of "How did I get here?" moments on the internet, but this is the first time it's been directly from an HN link.

[FabHK]

Somewhat unusually, the headline is neither misleading nor clickbait - you indeed get what you click for.

[pimeys]

Fisting is not such a weird thing in the Berlin gay culture, but seeing it mentioned in a HN link is definitely kind of weird.

[stcredzero]

The article is about sneaking phones (and chargers) into prisons

How practical would it be to erect a Faraday cage around a prison? How practical would it be to jam the signals? I bet one could interdict a lot of criminal activity by stopping or eavesdropping on prison cell phone conversations.

[piyh]

Another good quote

> fuck an iPhone 6 Plus, or, rather, don't. You'd look like Spongebob Squarepants: a rectangle with limbs hanging off. Having said that, I knew a dwarf who plugged a Blackberry

[agumonkey]

I wonder if prison libraries have electronics books.. imagine if they had access to esp microcontrollers.

[rconti]

Somehow I read it as "CAMERAS" so I thought it was about endoscopes or something. Still, happy with how my reading experience turned out.

[johnhenry]

Even after reading your warning, I still decided to check it out. Took one look at that cover photo and realized it was time to go.

[earlybike]

Thanks for the tl;dr! Saw the click-baity title and didn't expect any good content but this sounds interesting.

[14113]

I have the "cloud to butt" extension[1] installed, which led me to initially assume the article was about running phones as part of a cloud service, either for compute or testing. It was therefore quite a surprise for me when I actually clicked through to the article...

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-to-butt-plus...

[cpjreynolds]

Oh thank goodness it wasn't just me.

[tzs]

It astonishes me that in prison, where your jailers have:

• complete control over where you live,

• complete control of your movements,

• complete control over your physical interaction with people who are not prison staff or other inmates,

• in the US almost no fourth amendment restrictions on searching your living space or possessions and so can pretty much arbitrarily conduct extensive searches for prohibited items,

that it is actually possible for a significant number of prisoners to keep their smuggled items hidden once they get them in (and that they get them in in the first place is astonishing).

It gives one something to think about the next time one is taking a plane trip or attending an event with a security checkpoint. If prisons cannot keep banned items out or from being used, how can airport security or event security do so when their powers are much more limited than the powers of prison authorities?

NOTE: the prior paragraph is not meant to suggest that we should boost the powers of airport and event security. It was meant to suggest that the situation in prisons provides good evidence that much of our non-prison security is indeed just security theater.

[Filligree]

> It gives one something to think about the next time one is taking a plane trip or attending an event with a security checkpoint. If prisons cannot keep banned items out or from being used, how can airport security or event security do so when their powers are much more limited than the powers of prison authorities?

I mean, it's been amply documented that they can't. I wish we'd drop the security theater; there is no way it's a good tradeoff.

[whathaschanged]

Most contraband is not hooped (stored in the butt). It comes from crooked sheriffs and police officers whose union prevents their being searched properly before entering and exiting work.

[Florin_Andrei]

> that it is actually possible for a significant number of prisoners to keep their smuggled items hidden once they get them in

Read 'Papillon' by Henri Charrière. The autobiography of a long-term prison inmate. Well written. It's amazing what people do to maintain some small freedoms in a coercive environment.

[wang_li]

Honestly I'm not sure why prisons wouldn't be a little pleased that inmates are sneaking in cellphones. The prison could run a stingray on site and collect, at a minimum, the metadata about calls and I would imagine full recordings of calls.

[gaius]

What you're missing is that the guards are complicit. Some identify more with their inmates than with the outside world.

[LordKano]

You can never underestimate the creativity of people who have virtually unlimited time on their hands.

For all but the most violent of offenders, it's not worthwhile to spend the kind of money one would need to regulate their every activity.

[QAPereo]

It’s not that amazing, for one they only have the illusion of complete control, and for another many of them are wildly corrupt. How do you think many of those drugs and bits of contraband get to the prison in the first place?

[mrmondo]

I ordered a jelly which I believe currently holds the title of the worlds smallest smartphone, it arrived today and damn that thing is tiny! I don’t have any intention of putting it in my bum but if that was your aim - it’d certainly get you tweeting from jail in no time.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-the-sm...

[gotrecruit]

before i realized jelly was the name of the phone, i had this visual in my head that there was a tiny phone embedded inside a gel, which obviously would make it super smooth to slide inside your prison wallet.

[vxNsr]

This reeks of Alibaba drop-shipping, I'd be very surprised if this didn't already exist on Alibaba for a third of the price.

[napoleoncomplex]

Apologies for side-tracking the OP discussion, but how's the performance on this thing? Have been looking for a tiny phone for a while.

[peeters]

> 16 GB ROM

Why do they make such an effort to advertise memory that is useless to the end-user?

[ChuckMcM]

Fascinating little phone. Have any of them shipped to backers?

[badgerman]

Working in digital forensics I've seen a few of these. (rubber gloves and a facemask, or get someone else to do it)

Most popular were Motorola Pebbles and BMW Key fob phones, both small with smooth edges.

One Pebble frightened me, whilst it was small and smooth and, um, fit for purpose, it had been really badly soldered to give a point to attach the charger cables leaving some sharp prongs at one end.

[joshfraser]

For those wondering why phones are banned in the first place - It's bad for business. Data shows that regular communication with family is one of the best ways to lower recidivism.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/apr/15/lowering-re...

[Quarrelsome]

Reminds me somewhat of a time my friend worked for UK Maxim magazine around about the time they were a bit risque. They got an "important" call from the US office who had to come over for a "very important" meeting that all writers had to present for.

The content of the meeting was largely a dressing down from the US office. They had read UK Maxim recently and decided that there were too many anal related jokes and that the UK version of the magazine had to severely cut down on them upon pain of firing. As such the review for the ipod shuffle that was due for press had to be modified to "can fit between your cheeks".

I just find it hilarious that a couple of American executives had to make a transatlantic flight specifically for this purpose. :D

[berdon]

Could we just use EMP's near inmate rears to solve the problem without having to "dig deeper"?

[pbhjpbhj]

It must be pretty easy to block communications in a prison? Presumably it's a bit of a game, they want the prisoners communicating so they can track it??

[jlgaddis]

In ths U.S., at least, it is illegal to block/interfere with cellular transmissions -- even for prisons (there are employees and visitors with cell phones, nearby homes, etc.).

I recall reading an article about how one prison in particular was using DF equipment to track down phones since they couldn't block them.

[DanBC]

Depending where the prison is some laws would need to be changed before cell-phone jammers are allowed. That leaves converting the prison into a faraday cage, which is pretty expensive and difficult to do.

If you want to track prisoner communication you give them free access to landline phones which you record, and crack down on cellphones which are hard to monitor.

[Clubber]

I would think it would require a faraday cage around the prison.

[rjsw]

Put a picocell or stingray in the prison and monitor any calls made through it.

[gargravarr]

The fundamental of capitalism is that, if there is market for a product, you can build it, sell it, and someone is guaranteed to buy it.

As far as I'm concerned, this is merely the logical conclusion.

Agreed on the 'how TF did I end up reading this article' reaction, marginally relevant in the tech world, and amusing to read.

[baybal2]

Nokia 7280... Russia mafiosos like them for some reason

[rqs]

Yeah I just searched it, and now I can't get some unspeakable image out of my head.

[foreigner]

Sounds like they've cracked a niche market.

[thephyber]

I anticipate an increase in butt-dialing.

[Istribitel]

All set for a remake of Pulp Fiction. https://youtu.be/kngBtoylIVM

[floatboth]

Excellent writing. "Then there's André Silva, whose anus was the portal to an Aladdin's Cave of contraband"

[mattdeboard]

I think this headline rewrite is phenomenal.

[Boothroid]

This kind of thing makes me think we are in the dark ages when it comes to dealing with offenders. One day perhaps humanity will reach the stage where we have the know-how to prevent criminality, and effectively rehabilitate offenders in case it does happen, and without having to go to ridiculous technological lengths.

[maxfurman]

I'm reminded of the airport scene from Fight Club - phones that go inside "a" butt, not "your" butt

[Aaargh20318]

Apple should jump into this market and call it the iPhone XXX

[jwilk]

I can't decide whether I should upvote or flag this.