Myriad electronic devices—from radios to TVs, cassette players, and headphones—are available for incarcerated people to use in prison. Usually, these devices have clear plastic shells and often lack key features. (Learn more about their history here.) Open source software and hardware enthusiast Wenting Zhang recently purchased a prison laptop from eBay and cracked it open.
"Thought it should be just some generic laptop with a clear shell, turns out it's actually a bit more than that," Zhang writes on X.
From Hack-A-Day:
Much like their audiovisual brethren, these laptops lack basic features in the name of prison security, which in the case of this laptop means for example no USB ports. Even the spacebar stabilizer rod is missing. Weaponized keyboards are apparently a thing in corrections facilities.
Called the Justice Tech Solutions Securebook 5, it has been superseded by the Securebook 6. Inside this earlier unit, you'll find an Intel N3450 with 4 GB LPDDR3, with SATA for storage and a special dock connector. Some laptops come with WiFi hardware installed, others are unpopulated. It appears that these Securebooks by default have a BIOS password that cannot be erased…
Here's the latest version, the Securebook 5, which sells for $549.
