South Dakota
SD’s prison tablet provider dinged for data breach by Federal Trade Commission • South Dakota Searchlight
The company that gave electronic tablets to South Dakota prison inmates under a contract with the state hid a 2020 data breach for nine months and then told only a fraction of affected users about it, according to a settlement filed in late February with the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC’s decision and order in the data breach and fraud case against Global Tel Link (GTL) was issued on Feb. 27, two weeks before the South Dakota Department of Corrections suspended tablet-based phone calls and text messages for about 3,600 inmates.
That suspension is thought to have contributed to multiple nights of unrest last month at the penitentiary in Sioux Falls, including an assault that injured an employee. Attorney General Marty Jackley has said inmates involved will be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”
South Dakota Department of Corrections spokesman Michael Winder said via email that GTL did not inform the agency of any data breach. South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation spokesman Tony Mangan said the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division has yet to hear from the company about the number of South Dakotans affected by the breach, if any.
Corrections: Search for contraband follows second night of unrest at Sioux Falls prison
It’s one of several legal issues faced by GTL (rebranded as ViaPath Technologies in 2022), which works with nearly 2,000 facilities across the U.S.
For years, critics have called the Virginia-based company’s business practices exploitative and called on the federal government to step in and regulate rates – something the FTC has worked on for phone calls, most recently with an interim rate cap last reviewed in September.
The tablet communication shutdown in South Dakota wasn’t announced publicly until March 20, when the DOC said it was the result of an investigation. Gov. Kristi Noem said inmates were using the GTL-provided devices for “nefarious” activities. The DOC has not responded to questions about whether tablet security was part of the problem.
One week after the DOC posted a memo on tablet restrictions to its website, media gathered outside the penitentiary on the first night of disturbances could hear inmates inside shouting “we want phones.” The following night, inmates could be heard yelling “we have rights” and “water.”
Family members had been unable to visit inmates on “the Hill,” the area of the prison where the incidents took place, until this week.
A Monday memo from the DOC, posted to its visitation page, says that in-person visits will commence for those inmates on Saturdays, Sundays and the third Friday of each month.
Since last week, inmates have been allowed to make up to five phone calls a day with 20-minute time limits, using either tablets or wall phones. Electronic messaging remains suspended.
Inmates and their families have bristled at the restrictions on tablet-based communications, and some have complained about frozen inmate accounts with unusable balances.
Advocates who argue for rate caps and regulation of communications providers say the issues in South Dakota and across the nation come as prisons have become more isolated places. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, many prisons and jails stopped allowing in-person visits in favor of video visitation.
“At the end of the day, the fact that people are being exploited and still would rather have the technologies than not have them just goes to show how bad prison life is,” said Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative, a prison reform nonprofit based in Massachusetts.
Data security, financial practices scrutinized
South Dakota is far from alone in its use of private-company tablets for inmate communications, which typically double as correctional revenue engines. The state’s contract with GTL specifies commission rates for messaging and prepaid phone calls.
The South Dakota DOC charges less than the FTC’s interim 14-cent-per-minute cap for phone calls, but messaging services aren’t capped federally, and the state has collected revenue from both messaging and phone calls. Between 2021 and February, South Dakota collected at least $1.25 million in commission payments, according to data released to South Dakota Searchlight last month.
GTL has frequently been on the receiving end of political and legal scrutiny. In 2022, the company agreed to pay back $67 million to settle a class action lawsuit launched in U.S. District Court in Georgia over its practice of pocketing money from dormant inmate accounts.
Corrections has collected $1.25 million for calls, messages since 2021
Just last month, families in Michigan sued GTL and other communications providers, alleging they conspired with jailers to end in-person visits in favor of paid-for video visits.
The recent FTC action against the company involved a data breach in August 2020. The company and its subsidiaries had placed personally identifying and financial information into the Amazon Web Services cloud to test software. The FTC alleged in November that it did so without encrypting or otherwise protecting customer information, leaving information like the Social Security numbers, dates of birth and credit card information of inmate families and friends vulnerable to hacking.
That’s exactly what happened, according to the FTC’s complaint.
“As early as November 2020, (GTL) received multiple complaints from consumers stating that the consumers’ personally identifiable information obtained from Respondents had been located on the dark web,” the complaint reads.
By then, a data security blog called Comparitech had asked GTL subsidiary Telmate about the incident. Telmate told the blog the issue was resolved, and that no passwords or financial information had been exposed.
Those statements were false, the FTC said.
It took nine months for the company to inform individual users, and it only reached out to 45,000 of the approximately 650,000 people affected.
The FTC’s February order requires GTL to implement a host of security and consumer protection measures. Periodic third-party security assessments and reports back to the FTC on the results will be required for the next two decades.
The company will also need to inform all the impacted users – potentially including South Dakotans – that their personal information had been stored in an unsecure cloud computing environment later accessed by hackers, and to provide them with credit monitoring and identity protection services.
A spokesperson for the FTC said the agency does not have any information on whether the data of South Dakotans was part of the security breach or dark web data sales, referring South Dakota Searchlight to GTL for those answers.
GTL did not respond to an email on those questions.
Reform advocate: Prepaid communications a magnet for abuse
Inmates and their families are uniquely vulnerable to being squeezed by communication providers, according to Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative.
Calls and messages to and from correctional institutions are tightly controlled, as they are subject to security screening by corrections officials and paid for under the terms of prison or jail contracts with providers that offer no choice on costs.
Tablets have become lifelines for people in prison and their families, Bertram said, particularly in the face of restrictions on other forms of communication. South Dakota shut down face-to-face visits for more than a year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In a lot of places, sending mail and visiting a loved one have become more difficult as prisons have imposed additional restrictions,” Bertram said. “And that has only increased the value and the importance to incarcerated people’s welfare that these tablets have.”
Talk of tablets, phone calls and pricing schemes are important for the general public, she said.
Research suggests that maintaining family connections translates into a lower likelihood of continued criminal behavior after release. One study in Minnesota found that inmates who had regular visits were 13% less likely to return to prison on new felony charges. Another study of female inmates across multiple states found that “familial telephone contact was most consistently associated with reduction in recidivism.”
High prices or strict limits can put financial stress on families who aim to stay connected, she said, which can have ripple effects across communities.
“You don’t have to find space in your heart to be compassionate for people who have committed crimes,” Bertram said. “But you do have to think about the implications for broader society when there’s companies that are allowed to run rampant and do what they will with incarcerated people’s money by turning them into a captive market.”
The Prison Policy Initiative recommends free calling and messaging for inmates. Absent that, the organization argues that prisons and jails should not collect commission. Removing the financial incentive for correctional institutions tends to lower prices.
Dallas, Texas, ceased to collect commissions and was able to negotiate lower prices, now charging a cent a minute for phone calls through its provider, Securus, a GTL competitor commonly known as JPay.
In Connecticut, the Legislature made calls free, and barred both commission collections for its prison system and forced video visitation. California followed suit with free audio calls from tablets and wall phones.
Dropping commission payments also prevents the misuse of funds, she said. In Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, an investigation by the news outlet PennLive revealed that the county spent nearly $300,000 in phone and messaging payouts between 2019 and 2021 to purchase gun range memberships for prison staff, the sheriff’s department, the district attorney’s criminal investigation division, and probation and parole.
Fulton County, Georgia, saw commission funds used to purchase thousands of honey-baked hams.
“You shouldn’t be charging incarcerated people and their families for these basic needs and then turning around collecting money off of that,” Bertram said.
Other models in use nationwide and in South Dakota
Bill Pope isn’t so sure that dropping commission payments is always the right call. Pope is the CEO of NCIC, a Texas-based GTL competitor offering tablets that give hour-for-hour entertainment credits to inmates who use them for coursework.
Pope pointed to California to explain why. That state offers free calls, and the state’s Public Utilities Commission opted to cap commission payments and set rates for prepaid calls in local jails at 7 cents a minute.
State will turn on tablet calls for inmates and raise daily limit from three to five
Pope said those moves “obliterated the inmate welfare fund” that had been propped up by payouts. That fund is meant to be “used for the benefit, education, and welfare of inmates of prisons and institutions.”
Many institutions simply want to offer the lowest possible price in a communications contract, Pope said, but others view the commission payments as reasonable ways to cover the expenses of monitoring calls and messages. The bigger problem is hidden fees, he said, like connection fees that some providers charge. Pope would like to see those regulated.
“Eliminating commissions can probably hurt the incarcerated users more than help them,” Pope said. “Unless, of course, the providers are overcharging.”
Pope says his company is the largest privately held communications provider in the U.S.
He sees his company’s approach to tablets as more beneficial for inmates, families and institutions. NCIC has contracts in South Dakota with jails in Yankton and Sioux Falls, among others. Its contract with the Minnehaha County Jail includes commission payments for the Sioux Falls facility, but inmates needn’t necessarily pay – at least for entertainment. Inmates can earn credits through coursework.
The NCIC contract charges 16 cents a minute for calls – more than double the rate listed for calls on the South Dakota DOC’s website – but Pope said the calls subsidize the entertainment that keeps inmates busy and would otherwise be paid for by their families.
“Do your homework, and then you can watch TV or play games,” Pope said.
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South Dakota
South Dakota Medicaid to reimburse doula services starting Jan 1
South Dakota Medicaid will soon cover birth and postpartum doula services. Doulas can support families as part of a broader healthcare team during pregnancy and through the year following birth.
South Dakota Medicaid will directly reimburse doulas as Type 1 healthcare providers starting in the new year. Kelsie Thomas is board president for South Dakota Doulas, the nonprofit that worked with the state Department of Social Services to add this new coverage. She said doula services can include gathering personalized resources for families, patient advocacy and home-visits after birth.
“The doula role is special in this sense that it’s hired by families as an advocate, as a resource position, as a voice for you in the process,” Thomas said.
The most recent Medicaid Report from the state Department of Social Services notes around 40% of South Dakota children rely on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program in their first year of life. Thomas hopes partnering with the state Medicaid program will make doula services more accessible, thereby improving postpartum outcomes.
“We haven’t had that kind of financial support, and families have had to make room for that,” Thomas said. “Now being able to have that, add that insurance—which is trending nationwide. Insurance is covering birth and postpartum work just due to the impact we’re seeing and statistics for labor and birth and the proactive measures that it’s creating in lives.”
Various studies suggest doulas can help improve birth experiences for mothers and reduce the likelihood of postpartum depression, among other potential benefits.
Thomas said doulas are not a replacement for the clinical care provided by obstetricians or midwives, but instead serve as part of a pregnancy care team.
South Dakota Medicaid coverage of doula services begins January 1.
South Dakota
Lincoln County commissioners push back decision on carbon pipeline rules • South Dakota Searchlight
CANTON — Commissioners in South Dakota’s fastest-growing county punted on four carbon dioxide pipeline ordinances on Christmas Eve, opting to let their planning staff and two new commissioners start from scratch in the new year.
The Lincoln County Commission has wrestled with its approach to carbon pipelines for about two years. Several counties in South Dakota have passed ordinances restricting underground carbon pipelines so strictly that the company proposing a carbon capture pipeline through South Dakota, Summit Carbon Solutions, says it would be impossible to fully comply with all the local requirements and still build the project. The company has also applied for a state permit, which is under review.
Second filing fee for carbon pipeline project raises total potential fees to $1.47 million
The project is a $9 billion pipeline to carry pressurized carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska to an underground sequestration site in North Dakota. The company hopes to cash in on federal tax credits available for activities meant to mitigate the impact of climate change, in this case by keeping some of the heat-trapping gases produced in the ethanol production process from reaching the atmosphere.
Lincoln County is not one of the counties with stricter rules for carbon pipelines than Summit would prefer, though the controversial project has animated discussions about the issue and likely impacted the results of the most recent county commission elections.
Two commissioners, Jim Jibben and Mike Poppens, lost their primary elections to anti-pipeline candidates, one of whom appeared in the commission chambers Tuesday to voice her concerns about the four ordinances up for possible passage.
“I’m opposed to all of them,” said incoming commissioner Betty Otten, who also accused the current commission of being too cozy with Summit to be trusted to make decisions on the matter.
Back to the drawing board
Lincoln County commissioners opted last year to study the options for regulation. An ad-hoc study committee offered suggestions to the planning commission, which held public hearings on the options following the November election.
A state law dubbed the “landowner bill of rights” by its sponsors was on the November general election ballot thanks to a petition drive by pipeline opponents who felt it didn’t do enough for landowners to deserve that branding. The referred law failed to earn support from voters, with nearly 60% saying no.
Pipeline opponents receive cease and desist letters from Summit
The four ordinances up for possible passage on Tuesday were the result of the planning work and public hearings, Planning Director Toby Brown told the commission. Commissioners were meant to pick one, as each would set a different set of guidelines and conflict with one another if passed together.
The first and second options would have put planners in charge of deciding if a carbon pipeline project would qualify as a permitted land use. The planning commission did not recommend commissioners pass those.
The third would have required carbon pipeline companies to seek conditional use permits, which would open up a public hearing and the chance for opponents to challenge the county commission in court if its members voted to give Summit a permit.
The fourth would have barred pipelines in agricultural areas, but allowed them in areas zoned as industrial. With that option, the company could ask the commission to rezone the entire narrow strip of land under which the pipeline would run as industrial land. Voters would be able to refer the commission’s decision on the rezone to a public vote.
Vote faces pushback
Every Lincoln County resident to offer public comment on the ordinances Tuesday asked the commission to send the ordinances back to the planning commission, but not before telling them they’d rather not talk about them until next year.
“This is too important, it’s been too long, and I just think it’s prudent that we have the new commission in there,” said Scott Montgomery of Fairview, echoing the words of half a dozen others in the commission chambers.
Lincoln County’s failure to pass an ordinance is at least partially the result of actions one commissioner took before debate started. Poppens took a deal with Summit for access to his own property, and he’s recused himself from every debate and vote on pipeline regulations.
On Tuesday, though, Poppens did cast a vote, and it was to keep the pipeline discussion on the agenda.
North Dakota approves CO2 storage for Summit pipeline
Commissioner Tiffani Landeen had asked for a vote to table the discussion until January, when Poppens and Jibben will be replaced by the candidates who ousted them in the June primary. Landeen said the timing of the discussion and the weight of the issue for citizens combined to convince her that debate should happen after the new commission is seated.
Poppens, in his last vote before leaving the body, said no.
“Residents of the county, my family personally, we are impacted. So I’m not going to discuss the ordinance, but I am against tabling it. It’s an important issue,” Poppens said.
Also opposed to tabling were Jibben and Joel Arends, who pushed his fellow commissioners to pass an ordinance, ideally one with a 500-foot setback required between the pipeline and homes, schools and businesses. Members of the public had taken time out of their holiday week to offer their opinions, he said, so they ought to be able to do that.
He also said that the county has already delayed making a decision, and that leaving it up to the next commission would be a dereliction of duty.
“We’re in some kind of circular doom loop here,” Arends said. “We just have to put our feet down and say ‘we’re elected to office, we’re accountable, this is what it’s going to be.’”
But Commissioner Jim Schmidt said voting on the ordinances during a day many might be unable to attend the meeting wouldn’t sit well with him.
“Is it an encumbrance for you to come back? Maybe. I’m sorry for that, but I think there’s a lot more that we would hear from when it’s not Christmas Eve,” Schmidt said.
After deciding to take testimony and hearing every citizen who spoke say they disliked all four ordinances, commissioners took their final vote of 2024.
Landeen made the motion to send the ordinances back to the planning commission, on which she serves as the commission’s representative.
No one in the room liked the ideas on offer, said Landeen, a Sioux Falls attorney and former Turner County state’s attorney, whose own take on the ordinances was that they were vague and unworkable. The last option might seem the most palatable to opponents, as it offers the chance to vote down the commission’s choice. But even there, she said, she doesn’t like the idea of having “this weird strip” of light industrial land running through the county for no reason but to make a pipeline possible.
“The language of these ordinances doesn’t do what anybody needs them to do,” Landeen said.
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South Dakota
South Dakota Lottery Powerball, Lucky For Life results for Dec. 23, 2024
The South Dakota Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Dec. 23, 2024, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from Dec. 23 drawing
22-42-44-57-64, Powerball: 18, Power Play: 2
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lucky For Life numbers from Dec. 23 drawing
10-20-22-23-43, Lucky Ball: 01
Check Lucky For Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from Dec. 23 drawing
04-21-28-42-52, Star Ball: 01, ASB: 04
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your prize
- Prizes of $100 or less: Can be claimed at any South Dakota Lottery retailer.
- Prizes of $101 or more: Must be claimed from the Lottery. By mail, send a claim form and a signed winning ticket to the Lottery at 711 E. Wells Avenue, Pierre, SD 57501.
- Any jackpot-winning ticket for Dakota Cash or Lotto America, top prize-winning ticket for Lucky for Life, or for the second prizes for Powerball and Mega Millions must be presented in person at a Lottery office. A jackpot-winning Powerball or Mega Millions ticket must be presented in person at the Lottery office in Pierre.
When are the South Dakota Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 9:59 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10 p.m. CT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky for Life: 9:38 p.m. CT daily.
- Lotto America: 9:15 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Dakota Cash: 9 p.m. CT on Wednesday and Saturday.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a South Dakota editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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