ACCESS TO IT FACILITIES (OPINION) a circular issued by the Director of the Prison Authority (written in two versions, one of which is “communicable” to detainees, the other being “non-communicable”) dated 9th  April 2009, and amended on 13th  October that year. It sets out what prisoners are allowed to do in terms of using computers, firstly in their own cell, and secondly in communal areas. It defines the measures involved in supervising and monitoring equipment and activities, and also what equipment can and cannot be used. 4/ Firstly, the foregoing provisions are applied in ways that differ widely from one place of detention to another. In particular, a number of situations have been referred to the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté in which a certain type of equipment could be used in the cells in one prison but was not allowed in another; a prisoner transferred from another establishment might find that a particular peripheral, software program or data storage medium they may have been using for a long time was then confiscated. We should add that transportation charges covering computer equipment are not paid by the authorities, in cases where its owner decides that this equipment cannot be stored in the ordinary cardboard boxes used for such transfers (regarding this point, see the opinion of the Contrôleur général of 10th  June 2010, concerning the protection of property of persons deprived of liberty). Lastly, before the prisoner is released, this computer equipment is “searched” and data is erased, by formatting the hard disk: this formatting has already taken place (even though these files are regarded as lawful) without the agreement of the person concerned, even though this is required under section 6.3.2 of the abovementioned general instruction. Secondly, certain bans on computer equipment, which for example may limit (drastically in relation to current standards) its capacity or power (e.g. a maximum permitted storage capacity of 500 Gb for hard disks) are in no way linked to the necessary security measures but simply to the authorities’ ability to control their use or content. In other words, the considerations prevailing over these restrictions are not linked to the need to maintain order or to uphold the interests of the persons concerned, but to the inadequacy of the authorities’ supervisory instruments. Thirdly, while lending mechanisms have been introduced in some establishments for equipment purchases, all too often the authorities are linked to a single local supplier charging prices that are frequently 101