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Lost in Transit: Digitization of Mail Expands Surveillance Beyond Prisons

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When Wesley McMillan eyeballed a bulging sack of ecstasy pills in his friend's maximum custody cell, he knew they hadn't entered the prison through postal mail. The bag was too big and the individual pills too bulky to conceal in a standard #9 envelope. Most likely, the pills hitched a ride inside an employee's pocket during a shift change, a daily occurrence in American prisons. During his 20-plus years of serving life without parole for murder, the former resident of Robeson County, North Carolina, has encountered a pharmacy of illicit drugs: cannabis, cocaine, molly (MDMA), suboxone (a synthetic opioid), spice (a cannabinoid sprayed on smokable herbs), and pounds upon pounds of tobacco, which has been outlawed in North Carolina prisons since 2006. Drugs are not the only banned items he has encountered during his incarceration. He has seen a Case XX Hawkbill pocket knife and browsed the internet on dozens of smartphones. That’s why, in 2020, when North Carolina’s Department of Public

Lost in Transit: Digitization of Mail Expands Surveillance Beyond Prisons Phillip Vance Smith, II When Wesley McMillan eyeballed a bulging sack of ecstasy pills in his friend's maximum custody cell, he knew they hadn't entered the prison through postal mail. The bag was too big and the individual pills too bulky to conceal in a standard #9 envelope. Most likely, the pills hitched a ride inside an employee's pocket during a shift change, a daily occurrence in American prisons. During his 20-plus years of serving life without parole for murder, the former resident of Robeson County, North Caroli

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