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British Post Office Scandal
- zabil 3y agoI'm following this from the UK. I watched the first episode of "Bates vs Post Office". It's interesting to see that the Horizon system, set up in 1999, was a client-server model with a box in each post office syncing with a central server. I'm surprised they thought this would work back then, given the challenges like network problems, failures and backup and the sheer volume of data. To me, it seems like the technology wasn't available back then. They had a big idea for a paperless system, and the tech team scrambled to build something without checking feasibility.
- KineticLensman 3y ago> To me, it seems like the technology wasn't available back then. Banks had been doing this sort of stuff (distributed transactional integrity) for years by the time the Horizon system was conceived. SAP and Oracle were in widespread use, and Oracle (the database underlying Horizon) was explicitly exonerated as a source of the bugs.
- resolutebat 3y agoThe article seems to consist mostly of abstruse legal wrangling, is there a TL:DR of the actual bug(s) at hand? There was some mention of Fujitsu rabidly denying remote access only for it to be revealed they actually did have this, was it some kind of sync error or something more malicious?
- InsomniacL 3y agoDoes anyone know of a report in to the actual technical fault of the system?
- KineticLensman 3y agoSee https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-appendix-1.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-... (posted in another comment here) > the actual technical fault There were numerous issues, no single fault.
- Mashimo 3y ago> Post Office Ltd had ordered Second Sight to end its investigation just one day before the report was due to be published, and to destroy all the paperwork that it had not handed over. Gosh dang it.
- phkahler 3y agoSo.... In a lot of these cases the system wrongly reported money missing at these lower levels. It seems these numbers should have rolled up into sums at a higher level that also showed losses and they prosecuted people. But the money was never actually missing so where did it go? Hmmm?
- Karellen 3y agoSurely the "missing" money was never there in the first place? If a Post Office had £20,000 in takings on a day, but the buggy system reported takings of £30,000, then that's £10,000 of money reported missing, which the postmasters were prosecuted for stealing. But that £10,000 didn't "go" anywhere. It never existed.
- hermitcrab 3y agoIn many cases the subpostmasters paid the 'missing' amount to the Post Office, rather than lose their franchise or even go to prison. That then went towards Post Office profits and management bonuses. Ka-ching - Trebles all round!
- phkahler 3y agoWoops. There are two numbers that don't match here. I just assumed the higher one was correct and the other one was misreported by the system. You may be right that the lower one may be correct and the higher one was wrong, in which case the money never existed.
- red_admiral 3y agoI predict the next big scandal of this kind will involve AI of some form (not least because you can sell any code more complicated than a spreadsheet as AI these days). The post office scandal shows that you can horribly mess up "trust the computers" even before AI or "smart" systems were a thing.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoDupe/Related discussion on current event: Ex Post Office CEO hands back award after IT failures lead to false convictions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38930011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38930011
- jimnotgym 3y agoAs I said in another submission, people sent other people to jail through negligence and deliberate cover ups. People were bankrupted and had money extorted from them. The only remedy for this is jail time for those involved. They should lose liberty, have their name dragged through the mud and gave financial ruin. Make the time fit the crime https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38931792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38931792
- bestouff 3y ago> The Post Office agreed to settle out of court for £58 million. The subpostmasters' legal costs amounted to £47 million, leaving them with only about £20,000 each. Something's obscenely wrong here.
- 127361 3y agoAnother horrendous scandal in the UK was Operation Ore, twenty years ago. Thousands of people were falsely accused of purchasing child pornography because their credit card numbers were stolen and used by fraudsters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore#Controversies
- hermitcrab 3y agoThe TV drama doesn't mention Adam Crozier, who was CEO of Royal Mail 2003-10. I wonder if this is at all related the fact that Crozier was also CEO of ITV 2010-2017, the company that made the TV drama?
- hermitcrab 3y agoFujitsu’s non-executive chairman until 2019, Simon Blagden has donated £376,000 to the Conservative party. "Despite Fujitsu suing the Government over its failed NHS IT project on his watch, Mr Blagden, who was said to have dined regularly with PM Theresa May, was awarded a CBE in 2016 for services to the economy." https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fujitsu-exposed-real-culprit-behind-31845530 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fujitsu-exposed-real-...
- hiisukun 3y agoA similar, software based debt-recovery occurred in Australia from 2016-2020 [1]. The government of the day in 2015 figured they could recover ~$1.5B by automating some of the processes, since there were not enough people to investigate all the possible instances. The main issue was that the software scheme used averaging, which in some cases was not accurate. As in this story, despite people immediately claiming issue with some of the methods, it was pursued for years. And again, in several cases it tragically resulted in suicides. In the end, after ~$1.8B of repayments and a royal commission, a couple of people resigned but there was - at least in my view - no significant repercussions for the decision makers and responsible parties at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
- dazzaji 3y agoEvidently, there is now a legislative push for parliament to reverse these convictions: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0h48cft https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0h48cft “UK to bring in law to quash wrongful Post Office convictions” According to the BBC Global News Podcast “The legal step followed public outrage after a TV”
- RecycledEle 3y agoCovering up a crime should carry the same sentence as the crime. Putting an innicent person in jail should carry the maximum sentence the innocent person could have received. The problem is then they cover up even more.
- pmx 3y agoMy wife was watching the ITV drama on this last night and I had to leave the room. It was making me so incredibly angry that such huge injustices can be allowed to take place. I recommend the show to anyone with better control of their emotions that me!
- smcl 3y agoI was just reading the other day that some MP was calling for those who were affected to have their names cleared. It's fucking astounding that this hasn't been a priority until the recent TV series on it has come out.
- hashtag-til 3y agoI understand this might look like complete b*llocks, but it seems they are not doing that because, despite the good aim in this specific case, would create a bad precedent. The whole case, after so many years, is as ridiculous as it gets for a government scandal - I agree. At the same time, I kind of understand why this needs to be carefully thought as a legal manoeuvre.
- MarcusE1W 3y agoThis skandal is 6 years old. I find it hugely concerning that someone has to make a TV play that resonates with the public for politicians or anyone responsible really to show any interest in resolving this. The current activities and proposals probably have to be seen as crowd management and might not be an honest attempt for a solution, again.
- sdflhasjd 3y agoIs there any actual technical report of what's wrong with the Horizon system? This feels like a weirdly long Wikipedia article that only touches on legal points and that somewhat lacks in real substance.
- nelox 3y agoThe technical appendix to the judgement in Bates v Post Office: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-appendix-1.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-... The judgement in question: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-judgment.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-... [edit: added judgement proper]
- hermitcrab 3y agoThere is an excellent Computerphile video discussing some of the issues in the Horizons software system at the heart of this scandal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJm9ZYqL10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJm9ZYqL10
- hashtag-til 3y agoI was curious for the same, and ended up reading this - https://em360tech.com/tech-article/post-office-scandal https://em360tech.com/tech-article/post-office-scandal It seems like the classical mega-corp system issues: "These flaws included rounding errors, data corruption, and issues with synchronization between local and central databases."
- anentropic 3y agoI was listening to a programme about this on Radio 4 last night it seems like, on top of the buggy software, Fujitsu had contractors logging in to Post Office systems to manually 'fix' accounting errors the buggy software had produced one of them described how while they were logged in to the POS system it would appear to be working to the real user but would actually be doing nothing because it was in some kind of remote admin mode, seems like the sort of remediation that's likely to make things worse sounded like a total shit show
- walthamstow 3y agoBritons - this is your reminder that Private Eye is available for subscription at the very low price of £45 for an issue in your letterbox fortnightly.
- hermitcrab 3y agoWorth every penny for their investigative journalism. Even if you never read it. And the cartoons are very good!
- hashtag-til 3y agoHonestly curious: can you expand a bit on why subscribe? I live in the UK, but never heard about Private Eye before?
- pbowyer 3y agoAnd if you're not sure if you want to subscribe, Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast [1] provides a great roundup of their main stories in inimitable fashion. 1. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast
- walthamstow 3y agoThe most obvious and current reason is their tireless work on the Post Office scandal, but in general they print news that newspapers won't for fear of losing their relationships with politicians and other powerful figures. A recent example is the story that an MP walked in on Carrie blowing Boris in his office as Foreign Secretary while he was still married to another woman, and that at the time he was also trying to get her a paid job in his office. The Times had that story and printed most of it (though referred only to a 'comprimising situation') in their early edition of the paper the next day but it vanished from the later prints which end up in newsagents. The Mail also had the story online for a couple of hours before deleting it. Private Eye printed the whole saga including the gory detail and the article getting spiked. You might say this is just lurid gossip but as a taxpayer I would like to know if our leaders are giving paid jobs in government to women who blow them on the side, and I won't find out about it from any newspapers. (The cartoons are pretty funny too!)
- tommypalm 3y agoIf you're in the UK, the Panorama documentary on this from 2022 is really worth watching - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0016t20/panorama-the-post-office-scandal https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0016t20/panorama-the-...
- sigwinch28 3y agoIt’s another example of the British establishment and media blaming “computer glitches” and “the system”. A buggy accounting system on its own cannot cause such a disaster, unlike a buggy avionics system or a Therac-25. This scandal would not have happened if the people in power had rightly been skeptical of the output of an accounting system that had been called into disrepute by several employees. People did this. People chose to prosecute. People lied. The courts accepted dodgy evidence. The scandal is the post office employees, the solicitors, the courts, and the Fujitsu employees, not the buggy accounting system. People took the output of an accounting system as though it had come down from a mountain on a stone tablet.
- gumballindie 3y agoIt’s the same logic people use for claiming ai “will destroy us”. They deflect responsibility for making crapware. Having said that, there is not a single software company I worked at in the UK that has not suffered from serious glitches that no one wanted to fix. One I heard of and it may have been reported in the media was a prison software that let people go either sooner or later than they should have - never on time. Engineering is a joke in the UK because good engineers are considered “obsessed” while talkers are pushed in front. All due to the same mediocre leadership that blames the very same software they dont allocate proper engineering time to fix.
- mjburgess 3y agoIn middle of this it's obscene how the media neglects to mention who did most of the actual investigative journalism: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/ https://www.private-eye.co.uk/ -- for years on end, whilst the issue was ignored by the rest of the press. They all now jump in on it and elide the years of work put in by the PE. This is a common tactic in media outlets, esp. here, for the major sources to try to "own" issues with nearly zero work put in on them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChrisKnott 3y agoI think that Computer Weekly were at the forefront of it
- ss64 3y agoBut behind a paywall, so few people would have read it.
- hermitcrab 3y agoIIRC they sat on the story for a year before publishing, understandably worried about the blowback.
- mjburgess 3y agoThere were lots including, iirc, https://www.theregister.com/ https://www.theregister.com/
- drumhead 3y agoI learnt about the story from Private Eye, they'd been following it for years, there were other sources as well though, but none of them were the national press or the BBC or ITV. This story wasnt glamourous for them and they only swooped in when well after the court cases when it looked like there would be political dimension. Its sad that proper investigative journalism is only found in the smaller publications these days.
- HatchedLake721 3y agoBBC explains why it’s hard to overturn the convictions: The scale of the Post Office scandal means that there are no easy and quick solutions for the government. Ministers could advise the King to grant Royal Pardons, once reserved for the condemned as they faced the gallows. But these would be largely symbolic acts because the government can't, at the stroke of a pen, quash a conviction. That’s because the courts are constitutionally independent - and that means a second option could be difficult too. Parliament could pass an act declaring that all the Horizon convictions be quashed, but that would be an unprecedented meddling in the work of judges - and it would pave the way for politicians to do it again. The third option is a mass appeal with a crystal clear submission to Court of Appeal judges that the state no longer believes the convictions should stand. There’s a precedent for this - 39 post office cases were overturned in one go in 2021. But running such a case would not be easy - and it could still take years to resolve.
- prof-dr-ir 3y agoThis explanation may be correct but happens to also fit the pattern of the BBC carrying, perhaps unintentionally, the water for the government. The more important factoid is that, until the renewed outrage this week, no one in the current UK government was seriously pushing to fix anything whatsoever.
- makomk 3y agoOne of the big problems with British politics at the moment is that lots of people seem to think that if the BBC is less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket. Which isn't the same as not willing at all, they pretty systematically focus only on the downsides of government policies already - one of the examples that made HN was the UK Covid app, where the BBC treated using Google and Apple's framework as obviously better right up until the point the government launched a new app that did, when they immediately switched and focused only on the advantages of the old app due to it not doing so. They just don't do this as consistently as some other outlets. That is, the minimum standard they need to meet in order not to be perceived as carrying water for the government is not just lying and misleading the public in order to get the ruling party kicked out, but doing so as aggressively and shamelessly as the most aggressive and shameless of their competitors (which includes social media to some extent).
- mjburgess 3y agoTo clarify how this happened: in the UK anyone can bring a private prosecution where they effectively act as the prosecutor. This is usually used by charities who take on laws to prosecute (eg., crimes against animals). Here the post office used the law to prosecute its own staff in alleged crimes against the post office. So they were both the prosecutor and the victim. This gave them overwhelming incentives not to reveal all evidence to the defence, and indeed they hit many reports on these computer systems. That is a crime; and I imagine senior staff at the post office should be themselves prosectued. But the underlying issue is the gap in the law where private prosecution by companies is permitted even when they're the victims and when they hold all the evidence. This is the mechanism which created the insanity.
- switch007 3y agoPrivate prosecutions are also common in the railways in England There are also some parallels with one of the Government's train companies, Northern, who use similar scare tactics as the Post Office with threats of court action and some rail enthusiasts/experts have called their tactics "extortion" [0] (Northern is directly owned and operated by the Government. So they may flap and act indignant about the Post Office, but that makes them hypocrites.) [0] A thread on railway private prosecutions in light of the Post Office Scandal: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/should-the-railways-powers-of-prosecution-be-limited.251904/ https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/should-the-railways-pow...
- lawtalkinghuman 3y agoIn addition to the RSPCA example, banks/financial institutions bring a fair number of complex fraud prosecutions because it is in their financial interest to prosecute people who've defrauded them. But private prosecutions are indeed an anomaly and can lead to some weird outcomes. A few years ago, someone brought a crowdfunded private prosecution of Boris Johnson for "misconduct in public office". The whole thing was incredibly silly and a massive waste of time. (MIPO isn't there for politicians lying/misleading people, though that does indeed suck.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_v_Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_v_Johnson Also, following the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the CPS decided to not prosecute for lack of evidence. The Lawrence family brought a private prosecution which failed. Jeopardy attached at that point. Later evidence emerged which made the case a lot stronger, but had the Criminal Justice Act 2003 not been passed allowing limited exceptions to the double jeopardy rule, it would not have been possible to bring much stronger cases against the perpetrators. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence The CPS have the power to take over and stop an ongoing private prosecution, but the ability to bring private prosecutions sits really uncomfortably with the principle of double jeopardy. Like, someone could do a bad job of bringing a prosecution in a case where the CJA2003 double jeopardy exception doesn't apply and then the person can't be retried by the CPS.
- sirsinsalot 3y agoIf anyone wants to see a good example of the enquiry questioning, here's an excerpt. Software bugs ruin lives, but corruption allows it to happen. People, normal people, small postmasters, killed themselves after being wrongly disgraced for financial fraud while the C-suite of the Post Office falsified their accounting to award themselves bonuses. https://youtu.be/CQzrB3kuqck?si=8tE2DGhKdGXLFxsy https://youtu.be/CQzrB3kuqck?si=8tE2DGhKdGXLFxsy
- jl6 3y agoThis thing has layers. It's scandalous that a £billion computer system had basic accounting errors. It's scandalous that Fujitsu pressured the government to accept the system, and scandalous that the government gave in to this pressure. It's scandalous how the private prosecution hid evidence. It's scandalous how long it takes the courts to rectify miscarriages of justice. It's scandalous that it took a popular TV show to get the government's attention.
- nness 3y agoThe cynic in me says that the Government only took notice to shift the narrative from the fact that they've pushed the election until later in the year, when everyone expected it to be in May (where it was predicted that they would meet a resounding defeated.) I'm glad the victims are getting justice, but I hate that it might only have gotten this level of scrutiny because it's a fight that makes the Government look responsible...
- toyg 3y agoAnd it allows them to throw mud at current leaders of the opposition, who were then in positions with tangential responsibility (well, Davey arguably had real responsibility, and his defence that he was lied-to is weak).
- bmoxb 3y agoI would say that's more 'realistic' than 'cynical'. The current government is incredibly unpopular so it's no suprise that they'd latch on to something that will be universally seen in a positive light when resolved.
- csan 3y agoFurther IT related miscarriages of justice are a likely consequence of the recent 'digital transformation' of the UK's courts service - see https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk The case management software now used within the justice system itself is deeply flawed and poses a risk to large numbers of cases including child protection, benefit appeals, divorce and probate.
- toyg 3y agoI wish that were the only cause of miscarriages of justice in the UK... The whole British justice system is now beyond farcical. A quick read of The Secret Barrister [1] will leave one despairing for the state of the country. [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Barrister-Stories-Law-Broken/dp/1509841148/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Barrister-Stories-Law-Broken...
- csan 3y agoAgreed, these broken software systems are a symptom and cannot be treated solely as a technical problem to be fixed in isolation. HMCTS is spending ~50 - 100x the amount required (on private consultants) to create these broken IT systems whilst other parts of the justice system are starved of resources. A radical change in culture and leadership is required.
- hermitcrab 3y agoI understand the UK vaccination IT system (not track and trace!) was created by a small team and worked very well.
- zarkowsky 3y agoI always used to wonder why the folks at the cash register always make it a point to print the transaction slip in the pos machine and securing the paper in their drawers, when everything's recorded electronically already. Not any more.