# Editor's Soapbox Published articles for Editor's Soapbox. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Editor's Soapbox: Digital Mail DevFeed: [Editor's Soapbox: Digital Mail]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Ellis Morning Published: 2026-10-13T06:30:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [The Daily WTF]() Topics: [Cybercrime](), [alert triage]() Tags: [ai](), [editor-s-soapbox](), [nonprofit](), [threat-detection]() ### AI overview The author criticizes prison systems that digitize and censor incoming and outgoing mail, charge incarcerated people to view it on tablets, and use AI to flag content. The opinion argues that these practices harm incarcerated people and their connections with family and friends, while states have not shown evidence that the measures achieve their stated drug prevention goal. It urges technology professionals to avoid or challenge work that enables these practices and to raise awareness. ### Source excerpt Ever get some special letter, card, or picture from a friend or loved one that you held onto, maybe even taped to your cube or office wall? Is it something you still look at fondly, something that lifts your spirits whenever you're down? Certainly, a thoughtful card or letter is much nicer than a thoughtful email. Now imagine your special keepsake being scanned, censored, and converted into a digital file that you can only view from a tablet -- assuming you can afford the fee to access the tablet. The original has been destroyed; it's gone forever. You'll never get to see or feel it in your hands. It sounds almost too cruel, like something you'd find in a Fallout game. Unfortunately, it's reality for more and more people incarcerated in US prisons. I've been writing to an incarcerated person for a while now myself. I find the process incredibly rewarding; I think about my friend all the time and wish them well. Unfortunately, the scanning and processing takes absolutely forever, so in a given year we only exchange 3 letters per side. The digitized files that I receive have names censored out of them; I have no idea what's removed from my letters before my friend receives them. For me, this is all too reminiscent of exchanging letters with my grandmother in Iran before she died. Agents there would straight-up open the envelope, confiscate any valuables inside, marker over anything they didn't like, then re-seal the envelope and send it back on its merry way. Over 30 US states now digitize the mail passing in and out of prisons, relying on AI to judge what's kosher and what isn't. If you thought AI was great with resumes, just wait until you task it with threat detection! It's been working so well that one nonprofit organization had to change its name: the word fight, used in any context whatsoever, gets flagged. Once mail is scanned, it's only accessible by tablets that have to be paid for. Incarcerated people are already nickled and dimed for a ridiculous number of t