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Don't focus on the IT/software stuff - it's missing the forest for the trees. Some people really do need to go to jail, and it's the people at Fujitsu, the Pos

by AdamN 3y ago

Don't focus on the IT/software stuff - it's missing the forest for the trees. Some people really do need to go to jail, and it's the people at Fujitsu, the Post Office, and the prosecutors offices who were involved and negligent. They weren't all negligent but some of them were and it needs more than a civil investigation.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
I think the majority of the blame should be on the higher ups at the Post Office as they weren't so much negligent as being malicious. Fujitsu were more likely incompetent, but they weren't the ones who prosecuted the sub postmasters and perjured themselves. There definitely needs to be some heads rolling for perverting the course of justice if nothing else. I'm surprised that the court system is happy with the Post Office using them as their attack dogs.
- amiga386 3y ago
  Currently, two somewhat lowly staff engineers of Fujitsu are being prosecuted for perjury: Gareth Jenkins and Anne Chambers. Why specifically them? Because both gave evidence in Post Office prosecutions of SPMs that Horizon did not have flaws, then in the Bates v Post Office Ltd case, their support ticket logs (PEAKs) were finally included in evidence. These work tickets show both of them acknowledging bugs that create false accounts, and manually correcting data in the records and audit logs to balance it out... and also sometimes getting the "fix" wrong without noticing... and noting that they saw no need to inform the SPMs. https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html The very things SPMs said were happening and the Post Office and Fujitsu denied. They fucking knew it. They testified that the things they did day-in, day-out never happened, and SPMs were convicted and sometimes imprisoned as a result. Obviously there are a lot more people at both Fujitsu and the Post Office that need to see justice, but this is a start.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    The more I learn about the scandal, the more I think that everyone involved in it from the Post Office and Fujitsu should be prosecuted as taking part in a criminal conspiracy to pervert the court of justice.
    - tauchunfall 3y ago
      Yes, it's stunning. Print-outs of the support system tickets are shown in the inquiry [1] (e.g. the ones with former technical support engineers). For instance, there is one from October/November 1999 with conversation history of people from different levels of support, where you can see they (the support and software engineers) knew the exact amount of money missing and that the caller was "very agitated as he keeps having problems with the system when balancing. He thinks it is a system problem". I haven't seen support system tickets where they stated the discrepancies were caused by Horizon in the inquiry (obviously in court they proved there actually were), but I only watched a few hours of this so far. And the support engineers stated they did not grasp the implications of the callers having discrepancies. The support engineers even visited the callers on-site. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/videos https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/video...
  - duncans 3y ago
    See also https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/ https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/ > The Postmaster reported that the problem at his one specific site had been been happening intermittently all year. He told NBSC who sent experienced trainers out to ensure the Subpostmaster wasn’t doing something wrong. The trainers concluded the Subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and witnessed the error happening. The auditors, who were incentivised by the Post Office to suspend Subpostmasters with discrepancies (another story), came out. They concluded the Subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and they witnessed the error happening. > Chambers went to work. She delved into the system and reported: “have checked the system figures… and can confirm that all the variants reported since then have been calculated correctly. There are no known issues that would result in the variance being incorrect.” > Chambers closed the ticket with a definitive: “No fault in product”. > The cause of the defect was assigned to “User” – that is, the Subpostmaster. > When Beer asked why, Chambers replied: “Because I was rather frustrated by not – by feeling that I couldn’t fully get to the bottom of it. But there was no evidence for it being a system error.” ... > Chambers conceded: “something was obviously wrong, in that the branch obviously were getting these discrepancies that they weren’t expecting, but all I could see on my side was that they were apparently declaring these differing amounts, and I certainly didn’t know of any system errors that would cause that to happen, or that would take what they were declaring and not record it correctly…. so I felt, on balance, there was just no evidence of a system error.” > No evidence. Williams pointed out that it surely was unlikely to be a user error if both trainers and auditors had recorded the Subpostmaster as inputting information correctly. Chambers replied: > “Well, yeah, I… yes, I don’t know why… I’m not happy with this one. But I still stand by there being no indication of a system error and the numbers that they were recording just didn’t make a lot of sense.”
lol768 3y ago
Any engineer at ICL who was present when these prosecutions were going on, and *knew* there were problems with data integrity and quality of the system in general should've blown the whistle and shares (some) responsibility for these repeated miscarriages of justice just as senior management at the Post Office do. If folks here don't share this view in their day-to-day work, then they are part of the problem. The act of writing software does not exist in a vacuum and software engineers are not too stupid to be able to consider the wider consequences of what they are doing. In other professions, acting honourably actually matters and there are professional bodies which actually give a damn about the ethics and actions of their members. I'm not sure why it's okay for software engineering to remain in the dark ages.

by AdamN 3y ago

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

I think the majority of the blame should be on the higher ups at the Post Office as they weren't so much negligent as being malicious. Fujitsu were more likely incompetent, but they weren't the ones who prosecuted the sub postmasters and perjured themselves. There definitely needs to be some heads rolling for perverting the course of justice if nothing else. I'm surprised that the court system is happy with the Post Office using them as their attack dogs.

amiga386 3y ago
Currently, two somewhat lowly staff engineers of Fujitsu are being prosecuted for perjury: Gareth Jenkins and Anne Chambers. Why specifically them? Because both gave evidence in Post Office prosecutions of SPMs that Horizon did not have flaws, then in the Bates v Post Office Ltd case, their support ticket logs (PEAKs) were finally included in evidence. These work tickets show both of them acknowledging bugs that create false accounts, and manually correcting data in the records and audit logs to balance it out... and also sometimes getting the "fix" wrong without noticing... and noting that they saw no need to inform the SPMs. https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html The very things SPMs said were happening and the Post Office and Fujitsu denied. They fucking knew it. They testified that the things they did day-in, day-out never happened, and SPMs were convicted and sometimes imprisoned as a result. Obviously there are a lot more people at both Fujitsu and the Post Office that need to see justice, but this is a start.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  The more I learn about the scandal, the more I think that everyone involved in it from the Post Office and Fujitsu should be prosecuted as taking part in a criminal conspiracy to pervert the court of justice.
  - tauchunfall 3y ago
    Yes, it's stunning. Print-outs of the support system tickets are shown in the inquiry [1] (e.g. the ones with former technical support engineers). For instance, there is one from October/November 1999 with conversation history of people from different levels of support, where you can see they (the support and software engineers) knew the exact amount of money missing and that the caller was "very agitated as he keeps having problems with the system when balancing. He thinks it is a system problem". I haven't seen support system tickets where they stated the discrepancies were caused by Horizon in the inquiry (obviously in court they proved there actually were), but I only watched a few hours of this so far. And the support engineers stated they did not grasp the implications of the callers having discrepancies. The support engineers even visited the callers on-site. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/videos https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/video...
- duncans 3y ago
  See also https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/ https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/ > The Postmaster reported that the problem at his one specific site had been been happening intermittently all year. He told NBSC who sent experienced trainers out to ensure the Subpostmaster wasn’t doing something wrong. The trainers concluded the Subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and witnessed the error happening. The auditors, who were incentivised by the Post Office to suspend Subpostmasters with discrepancies (another story), came out. They concluded the Subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and they witnessed the error happening. > Chambers went to work. She delved into the system and reported: “have checked the system figures… and can confirm that all the variants reported since then have been calculated correctly. There are no known issues that would result in the variance being incorrect.” > Chambers closed the ticket with a definitive: “No fault in product”. > The cause of the defect was assigned to “User” – that is, the Subpostmaster. > When Beer asked why, Chambers replied: “Because I was rather frustrated by not – by feeling that I couldn’t fully get to the bottom of it. But there was no evidence for it being a system error.” ... > Chambers conceded: “something was obviously wrong, in that the branch obviously were getting these discrepancies that they weren’t expecting, but all I could see on my side was that they were apparently declaring these differing amounts, and I certainly didn’t know of any system errors that would cause that to happen, or that would take what they were declaring and not record it correctly…. so I felt, on balance, there was just no evidence of a system error.” > No evidence. Williams pointed out that it surely was unlikely to be a user error if both trainers and auditors had recorded the Subpostmaster as inputting information correctly. Chambers replied: > “Well, yeah, I… yes, I don’t know why… I’m not happy with this one. But I still stand by there being no indication of a system error and the numbers that they were recording just didn’t make a lot of sense.”

lol768 3y ago

Any engineer at ICL who was present when these prosecutions were going on, and *knew* there were problems with data integrity and quality of the system in general should've blown the whistle and shares (some) responsibility for these repeated miscarriages of justice just as senior management at the Post Office do. If folks here don't share this view in their day-to-day work, then they are part of the problem. The act of writing software does not exist in a vacuum and software engineers are not too stupid to be able to consider the wider consequences of what they are doing. In other professions, acting honourably actually matters and there are professional bodies which actually give a damn about the ethics and actions of their members. I'm not sure why it's okay for software engineering to remain in the dark ages.