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Brazilian judge orders blocking of cell phone signals in prisons(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sao Paulo, Jul 5 (EFE).- The Brazilian judiciary has ordered that signal blockers be installed in all the country's prisons to impede mobile phone communications among prison gangs, authorities said. The order issued by Judge Ritinha Stevenson of the 20th Federal Civil Court in Sao Paulo says that it is the responsibility of the National Telecommunications Agency, or Anatel, to install the signal blockers and that the testing of the system must begin within 30 days. The judge also ruled that the installation of the blockers must begin in the states most affected by the violence perpetrated by organized crime. Judge Stevenson said that the measure was necessary to guarantee the security of society in the face of the "sophistication of the procedures of organized crime." The installation of the blockers at prisons began to be discussed in May in Sao Paulo after a wave of violence perpetrated by the First Capital Command gang, or PCC, took the lives of 133 people, according to official figures. The PCC attacks, which mainly targeted police and prison guards, were ordered by the gang's leader, Marcos Williams Herbas Camacho, who from prison uses cell phones to coordinate prison uprisings and other activities of gangmembers who are not incarcerated, authorities say. As a result of the wave of violence unleashed by the PCC, which caused panic in Sao Paulo, Brazil's richest and most populous state, a judge ruled that cell phone signals must be blocked around six state prisons where very dangerous inmates are housed. EFE joc/bp |