Want to message someone in a Russian prison? There’s now an app for that. It costs about three rubles per text, once the censor signs off.
An ad for a messaging app called “Tochka Kontakta” (“Point of Contact”), designed for communicating with prisoners, has appeared on the ZT service’s website. The human rights organization First Department flagged the ad. The ad links to a separate website laying out the new app’s features.
According to the site, the app will let users exchange short text messages, letters, voice and video messages, photos, and other files with prisoners. The app will also let users file petitions and appeals and track their status.
The app will charge fees: a message of up to 200 characters costs just over three rubles; a letter of up to 2,500 characters costs 35 rubles. That is half the price of sending a letter form through ZT or through “FSIN-pismo,” the Federal Penitentiary Service’s own mail system, First Department said. A censor will screen the correspondence, a check that takes up to three business days.
Users will also be able to buy prisoners a subscription to entertainment content in several categories: sports, music, humor, and news. A single category costs 99 rubles. The site does not say how long access lasts.
The developers promise that “Tochka Kontakta” will soon be available on the App Store, Google Play, and RuStore. For now, users can download it as an APK file straight from the app’s website onto Android phones.
The site claims the app is already running at two penal colonies in the Leningrad region and one in the Pskov region. The site’s instructions, however, do not explain exactly how a prisoner is supposed to register.
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What is this?
A service through which one can correspond with prisoners. It was previously called Zonatelecom. The service operator is the company Zashchishchennye Telekommunikatsii, which is also responsible for creating the new messenger.
APK
APK (Android Package Kit) — a file format used for distributing and installing applications on Android devices. Essentially, it is an archive containing all the necessary components of an application, such as code, resources, a manifest, and other files, for installation on a device. APK files are analogous to EXE files in Windows. They can be distributed freely without uploading to digital stores such as Google Play.