Potential FCC cellphone jamming policy would silence incarcerated journalists

Incarcerated journalists risk their lives to reveal the horrible truth about Georgia’s prison system to the world. Yes, there exist bright spots where floors are not flooded with wastewater and fresh paint covers walls in the photograph background of smiling bureaucrats. But there have also been 1,895 prisoner deaths between January 2020 and September 2026. 

We record names of staff members assigned to the area during death, videos of medical attention, and any removal of bodies in manners not always respectful of a fellow human being. 

But our ability to do so is being threatened. 

Off-camera, politicians have moved mountains of prison-related legislative paperwork to remove the ability of journalists on the inside to report the ongoing lack of control. Cellphone removal and blockage has become the priority mission of the Georgia Department of Corrections. Failing that, the department’s latest endeavor is to support Federal Communications Commission policy that would kill the radio signals upon which these phones rely. 

Earlier this year, surveillance at Georgia prisons also expanded through the launch of the Georgia Department’s Overwatch and Logistics (OWL) unit. 

Fellow incarcerated journalist Lucas Zane wrote that “the Department’s case for OWL [Overwatch and Logistics program] (and the broader contraband phone crackdown it enables) centers on a few criminal case examples that Georgia’s Attorney General, Chris Carr, used as the nails in his Tough on Crime plank supporting his failed bid to become Governor.”

“GDC [Georgia Department of Corrections], aka prisons, have never been fans of publicity,” Zane continued. “The business of controlling those enslaved by the state is historically ugly; thus, they shun public exposure as stringently as any cartel or mafia organization.”

The road to cell phone censorship 

The political rebuttal to incarcerated journalists has been that prisoners’ experiences are exaggerated. But journalists on the inside are documenting those experiences through photos, videos, and testimonies published on social media pages. These reports supported the call from LBGTQ people incarcerated in GDC prisons for a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into violations of their constitutional rights.

Once the DOJ began looking, they couldn’t stop: After six years of interviews and note taking, on Oct. 1, 2024, the DOJ issued a blistering findings report of “systemic constitutional violations” ongoing within Georgia Department of Corrections.

In response, Georgia’s senate created a safety and welfare committee whose recommendations included “advocating for the federal government to allow state prisons to use cell phone and drone jamming technology.”

Committee members saw presentations from CoreCivic, one of the largest private and for-profit prison operators in the U.S., and GEO Group, a private rehabilitation company that provides “turnkey solutions” for government partners and contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in Georgia, including one where a Georgia Public Broadcasting investigation found staff routinely ignored federal safety and prison standards. 

Politicians chose to budget annually for new half-billion dollar high-tech facilities to house the prisoners in single cells alone for 23 hours of each day. These facilities, which are built under an umbrella of interference with communication signals, alongside retrofitting existing warehouses with similar equipment, assure a return to the measured release of news of prisoner deaths and deniability of claims. 

Though politicians like Carr attribute contraband cell phones to facilitating gang violence, limiting the technology allows the GDC to control narratives about Georgia’s prisons. No more can a family member claim to have seen a loved one beaten to death on Instagram. 

Phones render incarcerated journalists war correspondents — without press protection

Section 333 of the Communications Act of 1934 bars anyone outside the federal government from deliberately interfering with a licensed radio signal.

But Georgia politicians and telecommunications companies have reinterpreted the words’ meaning and intent. Carr has been at the forefront of the 23-state push to deploy FCC-approved phone jamming technology. In the spirit of Animal Farm’s “Some animals are more equal than others,” it has been determined that only ‘authorized’ signals — those from phones not operated by incarcerated individuals — are protected.

The FCC is still reviewing the record of public comment around proposals to allow contraband cellphone jamming in prisons, which closed in January 2026. 

Meanwhile, journalists on the inside continue exposing the lack of prison condition improvement from behind the walls of Georgia’s judicial industry warehouses. Their mightier-than-the-sword pens are the smartphones that have proliferated in the absence of correctional officers. Outstanding editors and social media prison advocates are their points of contact.

Beyond reporting, part of the inside journalist effort is contacting free world prison advocates with the names and information regarding each death in prisons. 

GDC — like many other prison systems — makes minimal effort to ensure family members are contacted in the case of physical or mental health conditions that endanger their relative’s life,    informing families only of the death. 

A federal investigation published in February 2026 found that emergency medical teams report an average 30-minute delay reaching patients due to security and staffing issues. Journalists on the inside enable advocates to track down and gently inform next-of-kin ahead of their learning of the deceased loved one via their posted photographs, and sometimes, video of their last moments. 

We operate as the equivalent of a war correspondent, without the protection of respect for the press. Efforts to jam cellphone signals mean we’ll be gagged.

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Jimmy Iakovos is a pseudonym for a writer and journalist who is incarcerated in Georgia.

This piece was edited by James Salanga. Copy edits by Marlee Baldridge.