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This should induce criminal charges not against the software developer, it should induce charges against management and those that believed the data is enough f

This should induce criminal charges not against the software developer, it should induce charges against management and those that believed the data is enough for a conviction. Difficult case because that would also implicate judges and public prosecutors. Of course that will not happen, but they are guilty far more than Fujitsu. A software error needs to be calculated for. This is technical reality that cannot be changed as of today. Of course that also implicates other industries like banking. I don't think the UK government has enough money to compensate the people it wrongfully convicted. It is harrowing mismanagement that the software wasn't tested immediately before any conviction. Everyone failed here aside from the postmasters themselves.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> This should induce criminal charges not against the software developer, it should induce charges against management and those that believed the data is enough for a conviction. Difficult case because that would also implicate judges and public prosecutors. Of course that will not happen, but they are guilty far more than Fujitsu. Not against the software developer? Let's wait and see whether they did due dilligence, shall we? This happened over a very very long period of time. People committed suicide over these false charges. Ruling out prosecuting the developer if it can be proved that they knew, did nothing, colluded in silence, etc., would be insane. FWIW, I don't think "public prosecutors" in the conventional sense (Crown, CPS etc.) were even involved here. The Royal Mail is (like until recently the RSPCA) one of the few entities in the UK entitled to bring its own prosecutions. The Royal Mail pretty much invented the concept of formal investigation and prosecution. This is the Post Office acting with the assumed prosecutorial power of the state; the CPS may not ever have been involved.
- agilob 5y ago
  > Ruling out prosecuting the developer if it can be proved that they knew, did nothing, colluded in silence, etc., would be insane. This should also include developers doing code review of the code in topic, but also all related code, all testers/QAs and product owner. There isn't one developer that missed that bug.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes. What I do think is that anyone who pretended there wasn't a mistake, downplayed it when they knew it could be causing the prosecutions or even significant reconciliation issues, should be looked at. First and foremost, in the UK, Fujitsu itself can (and I think should) be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter here if there is any evidence that Fujitsu executives conspired with the Post Office to keep this quiet, ever. If anyone ever ordered a developer not to go public with their complaints, threatened a whistleblower, deleted evidence, that should crush Fujitsu for good. But yes, individual executives should be at risk (the corporate veil can be pierced to include directors), and it's difficult to see how it is possible to rule out right now that there is real liability down the chain. The situation at the Royal Mail is likely to be dramatically more serious, because there's a significant chance they were both covering up serious failings and knowingly directly prosecuting people to do so.
    - agilob 5y ago
      >I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes. I worked in a highly regulated company, we were under supervision of FDA, EMA and German EMA. We once missed a bug in database migration where a boolean field was false by default in java (non-nullabe), but it could be null in database column. It apparently broke a few reports (NOT running software, just pdf reports) for pharmacological clinics, 2 developers, 2 testers, our PO and out CTO had "disciplinary" actions (don't remember what it was really called) and their actions were under supervision from external consultants our company had to pay for. It's crazy we don't have such rules in finance, food, data processing and publishing industries. > The situation at the Royal Mail is likely to be dramatically more serious, because there's a significant chance they were both covering up serious failings and knowingly directly prosecuting people to do so. Yes, RM decided to start internal investigation that lasted a few years, instead immediately contacting police, this is why it lasted so long and were so many victims.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
- jamessb 5y ago
  > The Royal Mail is (like until recently the RSPCA) one of the few entities in the UK entitled to bring its own prosecutions No, the ability to bring a private prosecution is not restricted to specific entities - it is a right everyone has (though some offenses can only be prosecuted with the consent of the DPP, and the DPP can choose to take over a private prosecution) [1]. For example, a woman tried to crowdfund a private prosecution for rape [2]. From [1]: > There are a number of organisations that regularly prosecute cases before the courts of England and Wales but they do so as private individuals, using the right of any individual to bring a private prosecution. One example is the RSPCA. [1]: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41885897 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41885897
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    OK -- I knew individuals could bring private prosecutions but I wasn't aware, I must admit, that the Royal Mail prosecuted as an "individual" now[0], and I stand happily corrected :-) Though strictly speaking, before the concept of the "private prosecution" was formalised in law, the Royal Mail already had prosecutorial powers; it has always had prosecutorial powers. (The Royal Mail basically invented investigation-backed prosecution in the 17th century). The Royal Mail is for sure one of the only major organisations to do it at scale too -- though the RSPCA did. The RSPCA have announced that they will no longer do it at all (not least because they have a terrible record of poorly founded and abusive prosecutions and had their arses handed to them in the High Court). The point I was making here is that this investigation would never have gone to the police, because they have always reserved and widely wielded this power to investigate and prosecute. The Royal Mail even prosecute dog owners whose dogs bite postmen. [0] which if you think about it presumably now imperils some individuals in a way that is distinct even from the extent to which Royal Mail (and Post Office Ltd) are vulnerable corporately.
zelos 5y ago
I really hope that it ends up with Post Office management in prison for a long time. There seems to be evidence that they shredded incriminating documents: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252498245/Post-Office-staff-instructed-to-shred-documents-that-undermined-its-claims-Horizon-was-robust https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252498245/Post-Office-st... According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  > According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent. Yes. And some families cannot be made whole; people killed themselves over this. (Just as they did over false prosecutions from "erroneous transfers" due to technical card fraud, which a researcher once alleged in The Register was propagated by the IT staff of a British bank)
- wongarsu 5y ago
  > According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent From a legal perspective that shouldn't be a problem, and isn't a good argument for lesser compensation. Either Post Office Ltd can get a loan, get bought or go bankrupt, like any private company. If it's the last one that will obviously create political fallout, but resolving that isn't the job of the justice system.
- samwillis 5y ago
  > part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent. That would be good IMHO. Some people will disagree, but the post office going bust, and then nationalised would be a good outcome. It should never have been allowed to be privatised, it’s a national service, a place for providing contact to many different essential national provisions. True it needed to cut costs, moving into smaller premises does that. Even the partnership with WH Smith’s and village news agents are sensible. But it should fundamentally be a government provision. And while they are at it nationalise Royal Mail, and properly split Open Reach from BT and nationalise that too.
candiodari 5y ago
That's the problem with government: 1) the justice system will not easily go against any government organization (because government has decreed that individual government workers carry responsibility "by default" for what the government does, unless the employee can prove the government maliciously caused the mistake (just causing the mistake, for example with bad info, is not enough), as opposed to the private sector, where businesses are "by default" responsible for mistakes, unless the business can prove an employee to be malicious) This means in a lot of cases judges have a choice when the government causes damage: destroy an employee's career AND giving them a very large fine, to be paid personally, or do nothing. Going after the individual is so unfair this is rarely done. That is probably exactly the intention. 2) government organizations, all of them, have legislative power to some extent (sometimes only over their own internal procedures. However, generally, it goes further. For example, the NHS can refuse care to an individual at their own judgement. Private MD's, by contrast, cannot refuse "basic" care, and can certainly not make that judgement themselves) 3) the justice system will only move against it's own people with extreme reluctance. Certainly mistakes won't be punished (they do this while repeating "how much responsibility they need to shoulder" at every turn. Asking how much responsibility it really is if there's no personal or even organizational consequences when they screw up is not appreciated. They have about the same level of responsibility as the player does in GTA5) So, you don't do business with local governments as a consultant ("other" governmental organizations, from National Government over ATC to NAVO offices, are fine)
- lbriner 5y ago
  Sorry this is mostly BS. 1) The justice system will not go easily against any large organisation unless they believe there is a case to answer. It isn't about whether something bad happened, it is whether somebody could be guilt in law. Governments blame their workers by default? Based on what? Going after the individual is so unfair? Again, that is simply not true. If an individual breaks the law, they will be prosecuted if there is a good chance of a conviction. The reason they don't always is because incompetence is not illegal. 2) The government organisations do NOT have legislative power. The NHS doesn't make up the laws, they abide by the laws of the land. They have some latitude within law but they are (and often are) still subjected to legal action both personally and corporately. 3) The reluctance is not against "it's own people", the judiciary is not the government in the UK. Again, there are laws which protect politicians from certain decisions but they are not above the law. Of course, there is always the potential for hidden pressure to make problems go away etc. but most of what you say seems to be inferred from prejudice, not from facts.
Tainnor 5y ago
> A software error needs to be calculated for. This is technical reality that cannot be changed as of today. Of course that also implicates other industries like banking. The problem is that, unlike forensic analyses and other scientific methods, the likelihood and nature of software errors is totally unpredictable. Most regular people would expect an accounting software to maybe have UI bugs, or being occasionally unavailable, or any other number of annoying, but ultimately insignificant issues. They wouldn't expect it to mess up accounting. Software is only "eating the world" because people trust its usefulness. At some point I wonder if we as an industry are not about to teach the world that software is not to be trusted, at least not for high-stakes situations. This is not the only example, think also about e.g. the Equifax security breach or the Boeing 737 Max disaster.
- rosndo 5y ago
  > the Equifax security breach or the Boeing 737 Max disaster Poor taste to conflate a nothingburger with the deaths of 346 people.
open-source-ux 5y ago
"This should induce criminal charges not against the software developer, it should induce charges against management" This is often repeated by developers and it reeks of hypocrisy. Of course management must be implicated, but so must be the developers. Innocent developers are not simply helpless cogs in the machine coerced by management. This blameless attitude held by many developers permeates the software industry. Whether it's the Volkswagen emissions scandal, ad-tech, or widespread online tracking - these were conceived, built and implemented by developers. And yet developers think they stand apart blameless from the consequences of their shoddy practices. I wonder if the Fujitsi developers, far removed from the Post Office staff, have ever stopped to consider that the software they wrote ruined the lives of so many people.
- JonChesterfield 5y ago
  > I wonder if the Fujitsi developers, far removed from the Post Office staff, have ever stopped to consider that the software they wrote ruined the lives of so many people. They may not even be aware that they worked on this. Or they may have relayed concerns about schedule pressure making errors inevitable, or may be working in an environment where no such concerns can ever be raised. It seems likely that they're working in the before-testing times which correlates strongly with risk of the above. I wonder about the procurement process that lead to Fujitsu supplying the UK post office. This might be an instance of the public sector picking the cheapest from N bids then looking surprised when cheapest turns out to mean crap.
  - open-source-ux 5y ago
    All you say are plausible scenarios. But there is also another one: the developers were simply not very good at writing code - neither diligent, thorough, or aware of good practices. Or they simply didn't care about the bugs or errors even if they knew about them. They never had to suffer the consequences.
    - jhugo 5y ago
      The developers in question probably don't even work for Fujitsu. They probably work outside the UK, in the software equivalent of a sweatshop, and spend most of their time copy-pasting from Stack Overflow and writing the kind of incoherent GitHub issue comments that every maintainer of a high-profile OSS project has to deal with these days. They provide the single-digit-dollars-per-hour code output, and Fujitsu makes sure the requirements are vague enough that they can meet them with the resulting dumpster fire, and this is the result.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
This is only incidentally a software issue. It's a software issue that accidentally - but perhaps inevitably - highlighted a political issue. Which is an example of dysfunctional corporate dictatorship. What actually happened here is that some people dared to question the hierarchy. Since that was unpossible - underlings can never be allowed to question hierarchy - it turned into a political circus where the authorities spent insane amounts of time and money trying to maintain an established order that was in fact broken. If this seems extreme, consider that in a functional system someone would have said "Wait, that looks wrong, we'd better fix that." There would have been some inconvenience and expense and possibly some awkward questions. But it was essentially a trivial issue, and the cost-to-fix would have been far lower than it will be now. Dysfunctional hierarchies are defined by this kind of refusal to deal with reality when inconvenient facts are presented by those who are considered subordinate. It literally becomes more important to punish those who challenge authority than to fix the real problem.
Diggsey 5y ago
> Difficult case because that would also implicate judges and public prosecutors I don't think judges would be implicated here. the court relies on expert witnesses to explain what to do with a piece of evidence. For example, if someone is convicted based on DNA evidence, you would have an expert in DNA matching explain the probability of this happening by chance. If a supposed expert in the software testified that this is impossible to happen unless money actually went missing, and that witness appeared credible, then what can you do?
denton-scratch 5y ago
> implicate judges Unless these cases were tried without juries, then the judge's responsibility is restricted to ensuring the case is conducted properly; that both prosecution and defence evidence is heard, and that only permitted evidence gets presented to the jury. It's not the judge's fault if some witness lies to the jury.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

> This should induce criminal charges not against the software developer, it should induce charges against management and those that believed the data is enough for a conviction. Difficult case because that would also implicate judges and public prosecutors. Of course that will not happen, but they are guilty far more than Fujitsu. Not against the software developer? Let's wait and see whether they did due dilligence, shall we? This happened over a very very long period of time. People committed suicide over these false charges. Ruling out prosecuting the developer if it can be proved that they knew, did nothing, colluded in silence, etc., would be insane. FWIW, I don't think "public prosecutors" in the conventional sense (Crown, CPS etc.) were even involved here. The Royal Mail is (like until recently the RSPCA) one of the few entities in the UK entitled to bring its own prosecutions. The Royal Mail pretty much invented the concept of formal investigation and prosecution. This is the Post Office acting with the assumed prosecutorial power of the state; the CPS may not ever have been involved.

agilob 5y ago
> Ruling out prosecuting the developer if it can be proved that they knew, did nothing, colluded in silence, etc., would be insane. This should also include developers doing code review of the code in topic, but also all related code, all testers/QAs and product owner. There isn't one developer that missed that bug.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes. What I do think is that anyone who pretended there wasn't a mistake, downplayed it when they knew it could be causing the prosecutions or even significant reconciliation issues, should be looked at. First and foremost, in the UK, Fujitsu itself can (and I think should) be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter here if there is any evidence that Fujitsu executives conspired with the Post Office to keep this quiet, ever. If anyone ever ordered a developer not to go public with their complaints, threatened a whistleblower, deleted evidence, that should crush Fujitsu for good. But yes, individual executives should be at risk (the corporate veil can be pierced to include directors), and it's difficult to see how it is possible to rule out right now that there is real liability down the chain. The situation at the Royal Mail is likely to be dramatically more serious, because there's a significant chance they were both covering up serious failings and knowingly directly prosecuting people to do so.
  - agilob 5y ago
    >I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes. I worked in a highly regulated company, we were under supervision of FDA, EMA and German EMA. We once missed a bug in database migration where a boolean field was false by default in java (non-nullabe), but it could be null in database column. It apparently broke a few reports (NOT running software, just pdf reports) for pharmacological clinics, 2 developers, 2 testers, our PO and out CTO had "disciplinary" actions (don't remember what it was really called) and their actions were under supervision from external consultants our company had to pay for. It's crazy we don't have such rules in finance, food, data processing and publishing industries. > The situation at the Royal Mail is likely to be dramatically more serious, because there's a significant chance they were both covering up serious failings and knowingly directly prosecuting people to do so. Yes, RM decided to start internal investigation that lasted a few years, instead immediately contacting police, this is why it lasted so long and were so many victims.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
jamessb 5y ago
> The Royal Mail is (like until recently the RSPCA) one of the few entities in the UK entitled to bring its own prosecutions No, the ability to bring a private prosecution is not restricted to specific entities - it is a right everyone has (though some offenses can only be prosecuted with the consent of the DPP, and the DPP can choose to take over a private prosecution) [1]. For example, a woman tried to crowdfund a private prosecution for rape [2]. From [1]: > There are a number of organisations that regularly prosecute cases before the courts of England and Wales but they do so as private individuals, using the right of any individual to bring a private prosecution. One example is the RSPCA. [1]: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41885897 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41885897
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  OK -- I knew individuals could bring private prosecutions but I wasn't aware, I must admit, that the Royal Mail prosecuted as an "individual" now[0], and I stand happily corrected :-) Though strictly speaking, before the concept of the "private prosecution" was formalised in law, the Royal Mail already had prosecutorial powers; it has always had prosecutorial powers. (The Royal Mail basically invented investigation-backed prosecution in the 17th century). The Royal Mail is for sure one of the only major organisations to do it at scale too -- though the RSPCA did. The RSPCA have announced that they will no longer do it at all (not least because they have a terrible record of poorly founded and abusive prosecutions and had their arses handed to them in the High Court). The point I was making here is that this investigation would never have gone to the police, because they have always reserved and widely wielded this power to investigate and prosecute. The Royal Mail even prosecute dog owners whose dogs bite postmen. [0] which if you think about it presumably now imperils some individuals in a way that is distinct even from the extent to which Royal Mail (and Post Office Ltd) are vulnerable corporately.

zelos 5y ago

I really hope that it ends up with Post Office management in prison for a long time. There seems to be evidence that they shredded incriminating documents: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252498245/Post-Office-staff-instructed-to-shred-documents-that-undermined-its-claims-Horizon-was-robust https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252498245/Post-Office-st... According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent. Yes. And some families cannot be made whole; people killed themselves over this. (Just as they did over false prosecutions from "erroneous transfers" due to technical card fraud, which a researcher once alleged in The Register was propagated by the IT staff of a British bank)
wongarsu 5y ago
> According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent From a legal perspective that shouldn't be a problem, and isn't a good argument for lesser compensation. Either Post Office Ltd can get a loan, get bought or go bankrupt, like any private company. If it's the last one that will obviously create political fallout, but resolving that isn't the job of the justice system.
samwillis 5y ago
> part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent. That would be good IMHO. Some people will disagree, but the post office going bust, and then nationalised would be a good outcome. It should never have been allowed to be privatised, it’s a national service, a place for providing contact to many different essential national provisions. True it needed to cut costs, moving into smaller premises does that. Even the partnership with WH Smith’s and village news agents are sensible. But it should fundamentally be a government provision. And while they are at it nationalise Royal Mail, and properly split Open Reach from BT and nationalise that too.

candiodari 5y ago

That's the problem with government: 1) the justice system will not easily go against any government organization (because government has decreed that individual government workers carry responsibility "by default" for what the government does, unless the employee can prove the government maliciously caused the mistake (just causing the mistake, for example with bad info, is not enough), as opposed to the private sector, where businesses are "by default" responsible for mistakes, unless the business can prove an employee to be malicious) This means in a lot of cases judges have a choice when the government causes damage: destroy an employee's career AND giving them a very large fine, to be paid personally, or do nothing. Going after the individual is so unfair this is rarely done. That is probably exactly the intention. 2) government organizations, all of them, have legislative power to some extent (sometimes only over their own internal procedures. However, generally, it goes further. For example, the NHS can refuse care to an individual at their own judgement. Private MD's, by contrast, cannot refuse "basic" care, and can certainly not make that judgement themselves) 3) the justice system will only move against it's own people with extreme reluctance. Certainly mistakes won't be punished (they do this while repeating "how much responsibility they need to shoulder" at every turn. Asking how much responsibility it really is if there's no personal or even organizational consequences when they screw up is not appreciated. They have about the same level of responsibility as the player does in GTA5) So, you don't do business with local governments as a consultant ("other" governmental organizations, from National Government over ATC to NAVO offices, are fine)

lbriner 5y ago
Sorry this is mostly BS. 1) The justice system will not go easily against any large organisation unless they believe there is a case to answer. It isn't about whether something bad happened, it is whether somebody could be guilt in law. Governments blame their workers by default? Based on what? Going after the individual is so unfair? Again, that is simply not true. If an individual breaks the law, they will be prosecuted if there is a good chance of a conviction. The reason they don't always is because incompetence is not illegal. 2) The government organisations do NOT have legislative power. The NHS doesn't make up the laws, they abide by the laws of the land. They have some latitude within law but they are (and often are) still subjected to legal action both personally and corporately. 3) The reluctance is not against "it's own people", the judiciary is not the government in the UK. Again, there are laws which protect politicians from certain decisions but they are not above the law. Of course, there is always the potential for hidden pressure to make problems go away etc. but most of what you say seems to be inferred from prejudice, not from facts.

Tainnor 5y ago

> A software error needs to be calculated for. This is technical reality that cannot be changed as of today. Of course that also implicates other industries like banking. The problem is that, unlike forensic analyses and other scientific methods, the likelihood and nature of software errors is totally unpredictable. Most regular people would expect an accounting software to maybe have UI bugs, or being occasionally unavailable, or any other number of annoying, but ultimately insignificant issues. They wouldn't expect it to mess up accounting. Software is only "eating the world" because people trust its usefulness. At some point I wonder if we as an industry are not about to teach the world that software is not to be trusted, at least not for high-stakes situations. This is not the only example, think also about e.g. the Equifax security breach or the Boeing 737 Max disaster.

rosndo 5y ago
> the Equifax security breach or the Boeing 737 Max disaster Poor taste to conflate a nothingburger with the deaths of 346 people.

open-source-ux 5y ago

"This should induce criminal charges not against the software developer, it should induce charges against management" This is often repeated by developers and it reeks of hypocrisy. Of course management must be implicated, but so must be the developers. Innocent developers are not simply helpless cogs in the machine coerced by management. This blameless attitude held by many developers permeates the software industry. Whether it's the Volkswagen emissions scandal, ad-tech, or widespread online tracking - these were conceived, built and implemented by developers. And yet developers think they stand apart blameless from the consequences of their shoddy practices. I wonder if the Fujitsi developers, far removed from the Post Office staff, have ever stopped to consider that the software they wrote ruined the lives of so many people.

JonChesterfield 5y ago
> I wonder if the Fujitsi developers, far removed from the Post Office staff, have ever stopped to consider that the software they wrote ruined the lives of so many people. They may not even be aware that they worked on this. Or they may have relayed concerns about schedule pressure making errors inevitable, or may be working in an environment where no such concerns can ever be raised. It seems likely that they're working in the before-testing times which correlates strongly with risk of the above. I wonder about the procurement process that lead to Fujitsu supplying the UK post office. This might be an instance of the public sector picking the cheapest from N bids then looking surprised when cheapest turns out to mean crap.
- open-source-ux 5y ago
  All you say are plausible scenarios. But there is also another one: the developers were simply not very good at writing code - neither diligent, thorough, or aware of good practices. Or they simply didn't care about the bugs or errors even if they knew about them. They never had to suffer the consequences.
  - jhugo 5y ago
    The developers in question probably don't even work for Fujitsu. They probably work outside the UK, in the software equivalent of a sweatshop, and spend most of their time copy-pasting from Stack Overflow and writing the kind of incoherent GitHub issue comments that every maintainer of a high-profile OSS project has to deal with these days. They provide the single-digit-dollars-per-hour code output, and Fujitsu makes sure the requirements are vague enough that they can meet them with the resulting dumpster fire, and this is the result.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

This is only incidentally a software issue. It's a software issue that accidentally - but perhaps inevitably - highlighted a political issue. Which is an example of dysfunctional corporate dictatorship. What actually happened here is that some people dared to question the hierarchy. Since that was unpossible - underlings can never be allowed to question hierarchy - it turned into a political circus where the authorities spent insane amounts of time and money trying to maintain an established order that was in fact broken. If this seems extreme, consider that in a functional system someone would have said "Wait, that looks wrong, we'd better fix that." There would have been some inconvenience and expense and possibly some awkward questions. But it was essentially a trivial issue, and the cost-to-fix would have been far lower than it will be now. Dysfunctional hierarchies are defined by this kind of refusal to deal with reality when inconvenient facts are presented by those who are considered subordinate. It literally becomes more important to punish those who challenge authority than to fix the real problem.

Diggsey 5y ago

> Difficult case because that would also implicate judges and public prosecutors I don't think judges would be implicated here. the court relies on expert witnesses to explain what to do with a piece of evidence. For example, if someone is convicted based on DNA evidence, you would have an expert in DNA matching explain the probability of this happening by chance. If a supposed expert in the software testified that this is impossible to happen unless money actually went missing, and that witness appeared credible, then what can you do?

denton-scratch 5y ago

> implicate judges Unless these cases were tried without juries, then the judge's responsibility is restricted to ensuring the case is conducted properly; that both prosecution and defence evidence is heard, and that only permitted evidence gets presented to the jury. It's not the judge's fault if some witness lies to the jury.