Parolees Are Being Forced To Download Telmate’s Guardian App That Listens and Records Every Move

XXongo writes: Monitoring parolees released from prison by an app on their smartphone sounds like a good idea, right? The phone has facial recognition and biometric ID, and a GPS system that knows where it is. But what if the app doesn’t work? In a story on Gizmodo, the [Telmate Guardian] app’s coding is “sloppy” and “irresponsible” and its default privacy settings are wildly invasive, asking for “excessive permissions” to access device data. And the app isn’t even accurate on recognizing parolees, nor on knowing location, with one parolee noting that the app set off the high-pitched warning alarm and sent a notification to her parole officers telling him that she was not at home multiple times in the middle of the night, when she was in fact at home and in bed. The device also serves as a covert surveillance bug, with built-in potential to covertly record ambient audio from the phone, even in standby mode — a feature which is not even legal in many states. “But there’s nothing you can do,” according to one parolee. “If you don’t accept it, then you go back to prison. You’re considered their property. That’s how they see it.”