Their rights are limited, yes, but what about the person on the other end of the call? I feel this is a gross violation of the 4th amendment rights of anyone who receives calls from an inmate subject to this program.
The communication services are predatory. Anecdotally, using a cell phone or cordless phone subjects you to having your call terminated due to '3rd party calls are not allowed'. When contacting customer service they pointed me to FAQ where it said cordless/cell phones should not be used and re-queued me without listening to my complaint. The rate given when pre-purchasing funds was $3 plus applicable fees/taxes for a 15 minute call. Except the jail limits calls to 10 minutes. The system is set up to make the cost ambiguous. I've had the service disconnect me within moments of connection and they could care less. I've reverted to writing post cards (letters are banned too, seems convenient for their bottom line). Family members of those incarcerated are preyed on by these monopolies deemed ok because 'its jail'.
You aren't likely to see any 4th amendment cases brought here because even when they do investigate crimes with info from prison calls they can easily use parallel construction to build their case on something that doesn't fall under the 4th.
Also because any expectation of privacy you have after hearing "This call may be recorded" is per se unreasonable, so the Fourth Amendment has no applicability here.
Sure but once they start moving into the pen register side of things to connect the dots between the folks on the other side of a prison phone call and the second level of connections they create you start to get into some gray-er areas. It becomes easier to dig through a trash can to find cause for a warrant than to use the call + pen register data.
