In his 25-plus years as a Texas state senator, John Whitmire had never received a phone call like this one. This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue. "I know your daughters' names," said a nasal voice. "I know how old they are. I know where they live." Then the caller recited the young women's names, ages, and addresses. The senator, sitting at an antique rolltop desk in his Houston office, gripped the handset tighter. Whitmire is the bald-headed, blunt-talking chair of the state senate's Criminal Justice Committee, a law-and-order man who displays an engraved pistol in his office. But that call last October 7, he says, "scared the hell out of me." Richard Tabler, the man on the other end of the line, had murdered at least two people and possibly four. He was a prisoner on Texas' death row, supposedly locked safely away. But from the narrow bunk of his solitary cell an hour's drive north of Houston, Tabler had reached out and touched one of the Lone Star State's most powerful politicians with a smuggled Motorola cell phone. Tabler insists he was just voicing concerns to a public official. "I was talking to him about treatment on death row, how inmates are abused back here, not fed, not showered," he says, sitting in a locked booth in the visiting room of Polunsky Unit, the sprawling facility that houses death row. He's facing me through a thick pane of bulletproof glass. We talk, of course, by telephone. Tall, pale, and gangly, with wispy facial hair and big green eyes that bulge like an emu's, Tabler looks considerably younger than his 30 years. A crudely tattooed tear leaks from one eye. Rows of thin white self-inflicted scars mark the backs of his hands and forearms. A former cook with a long, violent criminal history, Tabler wound up in Polunsky after resolving a disagreement with the manager of a strip club and his friend by shooting them dead. Days later, two teenage pole dancers who worked at the club were also murdered. Tabler freely owns up to shooting the two men, which earned him his death sentence. He has at various times admitted and denied slaying the strippers. (He tells me he "gave the green light" for their murders.) Whitmire didn't believe Tabler when he announced who he was. So the inmate kicked the door of his cell, flushed his steel toilet, and held the phone out to the clanging and yelling from the row's other residents. And, just to make sure he had the senator's attention, Tabler rattled off those personal details about his daughters. Tabler claims he didn't mean to threaten Whitmire. "I was letting him know that just because I'm on death row, it doesn't mean I'm stupid," he says. "It doesn't mean I can't get information." Inmates aren't allowed to have cell phones in any US prison, let alone on death row. But the 21st century's ubiquitous communications tools are nonetheless turning up by the thousands in lockups not just in Texas but across the US and around the world. Last year alone, officials confiscated 947 phones in Maryland, some 2,000 handsets and accessories in South Carolina, and 2,800 mobiles in California. The presence of cell phones is changing the very meaning of imprisonment. Incarceration is supposed to isolate criminals, keeping them away from one another and the rest of us so they can't cause any more harm. But with a wireless handset, an inmate can slip through walls and locked doors at will and maintain a digital presence in the outside world. Prisoners are using voice calls, text messages, email, and handheld Web browsers to taunt their victims, intimidate witnesses, run gangs, and organize escapes—including at least one incident in Tennessee in which a guard was killed. An Indiana inmate doing 40 years for arson made harassing calls to a 23-year-old woman he'd never met and phoned in bomb threats to the state fair for extra laughs. Video: California Department of Corrections "Cell phones," says James Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association, "are now one of our top security threats." Talking to his own security threat, Whitmire stayed calm, hearing out the prisoner's complaints. He noted Tabler's number, then promptly called John Moriarty, the Texas prison system's beefy, mustached inspector general, asking how the hell an inmate had gotten hold of a cell phone in what is supposed to be one of the state's highest-security lockups. Moriarty's people subpoenaed the records for the phone that had dialed Whitmire. They were astonished by what they found: The device had logged more than 2,800 calls and text messages in the preceding month. At least nine other prisoners had used it, investigators say, including members of such notorious gangs as the Aryan Brotherhood and the Crips. In response, on October 20, Texas governor Rick Perry ordered every one of the state's 112 prisons locked down and all 156,000 inmates searched. Officials found 128 phones, including a dozen on death row, as well as scores of chargers, batteries, and SIM cards. That brought the total number of phones and related items confiscated from Texas prisons in 2008 to more than 1,000.

Confiscated handsets; Alba, a phone-sniffing Belgian Malinois, demonstrates her keen nose. Photos: Andrew Hetherington Tabler was chatting with a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman when Perry's statewide search kicked off. "Give me 15 minutes and I'll tell you what kind of car you drive," he bragged. "I'll tell you your Social Security number." Minutes later, a team of riot-suited guards stormed his cell. Prisoners have always been able to communicate with the outside world, through whispered conversations with visitors, smuggled notes, and a litany of more ingenious methods. But the ease with which they can do it today is chilling. During a hearing on the activities of Blood gang members imprisoned in New Jersey, a state police officer testified that he listened in on a 45-minute conference call that linked Bloods in three different lockups with three others on the streets. And then there are all the worrisome things a prisoner might look up online, like recipes for making explosives, tips for faking medical conditions, or the home addresses of, say, a politician's daughters—not to mention guards and various enemies. Consider the case of a, a 38-year-old Maryland resident who had the bad luck to witness a street murder in Baltimore and the rare courage to agree to testify against the accused killer, Patrick Byers. According to prosecutors, Byers acquired a phone while awaiting trial in Baltimore's City Detention Center. He obtained Lackl's name, address, and phone number and allegedly texted that information to a friend on the outside, along with an offer of $2,500 to get rid of Lackl. On July 2, 2007, the friend rounded up a couple of thugs and drove out to Lackl's modest suburban home, where authorities say the crew blasted him to death with a .44 Magnum. Grim as that story is, it's just an intimation of how dangerous cell-phone-connected inmates can be if their network is left to grow unchecked. Brazil provides an especially bloody lesson. For years, the country's largest prison gang, Primeiro Comando da Capital, has been using mobile phones to strengthen its grip on the state of Sè3o Paulo's inmates and establish a presence on the outside. In 2006, annoyed by the transfer of some of its members to more restrictive facilities, the PCC used its cellular network to launch simultaneous riots in dozens of prisons and a wave of attacks on police in the streets of the state capital. More than 40 officers and guards were killed in the first four days alone. Hundreds more died in the ensuing violence. The North Branch Correctional Institution spreads out along a wooded valley in mountainous western Maryland. The massive, low-lying complex of concrete and razor wire is one of the most technologically sophisticated maximum-security prisons in the nation. Electronic cell doors are opened remotely. Touching the perimeter fence triggers a volley of microwaves that alerts video cameras to focus on the spot. But despite the fancy surveillance gear, phones keep finding their way in. "Inmates come up with all kinds of methods," says former NBCI warden John Rowley as he leafs through photos of mobiles found in hollowed-out soap bars and glued-together stacks of graham crackers. Elsewhere, phones have been tied to carrier pigeons and lashed to arrows shot over prison walls. Officials found 78 devices welded inside an air compressor being delivered to one Texas lockup. But the easiest—and probably most common—way mobiles are moving into prisons is in the pockets of guards and other prison staff. "There's no question that corrupt officers are involved," says Texas inspector general Moriarty. The risk is small, the payoff big. Correctional staff coming to work are typically searched only lightly, if at all, and a phone can fetch a couple thousand dollars. One California officer told investigators he made more than $100,000 in a single year selling phones. Prisoners face a similar risk-reward calculus. In most states, the laws haven't kept pace with technology; getting caught with a cell phone is not a crime but a rule violation, like being found in possession of a cigarette. And there's good money to be made on rentals. Once a phone is in, prisoners have little trouble concealing it. Cellular components have been found stashed inside Bible bindings, shoe heels, peanut butter jars, and toilet pipes. Moriarty has an x-ray showing a handset and charger lodged up what he refers to as an inmate's "keister." (Which begs the question: ring or vibrate?) To find concealed phones, North Branch uses a decidedly low tech piece of equipment: Alba, an irrationally exuberant, gingerbread-colored Belgian Malinois. It turns out that mobiles have a distinct scent, which specially trained dogs like Alba can detect. "I didn't believe it would work at first," says Peter Anderson, who has been head trainer of the Maryland prison system's canine unit for a decade. But after learning the method from a British colleague who developed it in 2006, Anderson trained four dogs for Maryland. Last year, they flushed out 59 phones.