Brussels, 25/08/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 21 August, the UK Home Office admitted that files containing information on all prisoners in England and Wales, 84,000 in total, had been lost. A computer memory stick, which contained prisoners' names and dates of birth, was lost by private contractor PA Consulting. The addresses of 33,000 individuals with six or more convictions were lost, along with information on 10,000 offenders regarded as prolific. In July, the Ministry of Defence admitted that over 700 portable computers had been lost or stolen since 2004. In November 2007, the government admitted losing confidential files containing information relating to 25 million British citizens receiving child benefit, and in January of this year, the same ministry confessed that a portable computer containing information on 600,000 potential recruits had been stolen from an officer. (B.C./transl.rt)