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The most important points in the article seem to be summed up in just a few lines: “Customers making and receiving genuine transactions have absolutely nothing

The most important points in the article seem to be summed up in just a few lines: “Customers making and receiving genuine transactions have absolutely nothing to fear,” a [Barclays] spokesperson says. Except Rahman is not a criminal and has spent three months without access to his money. He might still be without it if the Observer had not intervened shortly before Christmas. The rest is a sad but educational story of how much we now depend on big business to live normal lives and how the big, automated systems used by those businesses make no allowances for the human consequences when they make mistakes.

yunolisten 10y ago
> and how the big, automated systems used by those businesses make no allowances for the human consequences when they make mistakes. From experience, nor do the wage slaves simply enforcing the 'rules' as dictated by their employers.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  But in those days if something was obviously wrong you could ask to speak to someone more senior, and typically at least the duty manager in the branch had the authority to do something about an obvious problem. Now it seems if the computer says no, you just get a practised smile and some variation of "I'm very sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help you today."
  - vidarh 10y ago
    There is a reason the "computer says no" sketches in Little Britain resonated with people.
gambiting 10y ago
>>“Customers making and receiving genuine transactions have absolutely nothing to fear,” a [Barclays] spokesperson says. the problem with this statement is exactly the same as with the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" argument. What if you get flagged up as a terrorist in some database somewhere, because you sent an email to a friend from Iran that you met at uni? Suddenly, your entire life is turned upside down, and there's no easy way to fix it. But hey, if you have nothing to hide, you wouldn't have this problem, right??? /s
- Silhouette 10y ago
  Suddenly, your entire life is turned upside down, and there's no easy way to fix it. Yes, this is a real and apparently increasing problem in our increasingly impersonal and automated society. It's not just malice that can get you, it's also incompetence, and everyone has something to fear from that.
  - rrobukef 10y ago
    Incompetence? Try randomness. 'There is only a one in a million chance of wrongly detecting fraud' means it happens every day. The incompetence starts after this!

yunolisten 10y ago

> and how the big, automated systems used by those businesses make no allowances for the human consequences when they make mistakes. From experience, nor do the wage slaves simply enforcing the 'rules' as dictated by their employers.

Silhouette 10y ago
But in those days if something was obviously wrong you could ask to speak to someone more senior, and typically at least the duty manager in the branch had the authority to do something about an obvious problem. Now it seems if the computer says no, you just get a practised smile and some variation of "I'm very sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help you today."
- vidarh 10y ago
  There is a reason the "computer says no" sketches in Little Britain resonated with people.

gambiting 10y ago

>>“Customers making and receiving genuine transactions have absolutely nothing to fear,” a [Barclays] spokesperson says. the problem with this statement is exactly the same as with the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" argument. What if you get flagged up as a terrorist in some database somewhere, because you sent an email to a friend from Iran that you met at uni? Suddenly, your entire life is turned upside down, and there's no easy way to fix it. But hey, if you have nothing to hide, you wouldn't have this problem, right??? /s

Silhouette 10y ago
Suddenly, your entire life is turned upside down, and there's no easy way to fix it. Yes, this is a real and apparently increasing problem in our increasingly impersonal and automated society. It's not just malice that can get you, it's also incompetence, and everyone has something to fear from that.
- rrobukef 10y ago
  Incompetence? Try randomness. 'There is only a one in a million chance of wrongly detecting fraud' means it happens every day. The incompetence starts after this!