From Magistrate Judge Steve Kim's opinion in Perez v. Engleman (C.D. Cal.), decided two months ago but just recently affirmed by District Judge George Wu:
Petitioner Jonatan Perez is a federal inmate in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) who lost 41 days of good-conduct-time credit (among other sanctions) after a BOP disciplinary decision finding that he had engaged in conduct disrupting or interfering with prison security and operations. Petitioner was identified in a public TikTok video made with a contraband cellphone showing him and several other inmates preparing, cooking, or eating contraband food [shown above -EV] inside a low-security federal prison camp….
When interviewed, the suspected inmates remarked that it was "very easy and convenient" to get contraband food into the prison camp. Petitioner added that "he used to be a Chef" and "would help cook inside the dorm and help others make food." …
No express BOP regulation, however, prohibits video recording or social media posting as such. BOP investigators thus had to rely on a catchall regulation—as pertinent here, prison code 199—prohibiting conduct that (a) disrupts or interferes with the security and orderly operation of a BOP facility, and (b) is "most like" an otherwise expressly prohibited act. Since cellphones or similar electronic devices—essential to creating video content or posting it on social media—are of course banned inside federal prisons, petitioner and the other inmates identified in the TikTok video were each charged in an incident report with generally prohibited disruptive conduct most like the expressly prohibited possession, introduction, or use of a contraband device….
