4 ms·

Partly its to do with the people in the courtroom not knowing enough about IT, so that when the Post Office claimed their massive late 90s XML based hub-and-spo

Partly its to do with the people in the courtroom not knowing enough about IT, so that when the Post Office claimed their massive late 90s XML based hub-and-spoke database with 13,000 spokes was 'robust' it was taken as a given. Whereas anyone in IT could look at the architecture and think "well, there's bound to be all kinds of bugs in there". I mean, they had expert witnesses and stuff. But I've been reading about this in Private Eye for years, and as an IT person you read it and think 'yes those people are totally being fucked over because the organisation is hiding the bugs that obviously lurk in their enterprisey system' whereas for non-technical people it was less obvious.

forinti 3y ago
Surely they could have checked the accounting and then verified what products and services were sold and what the total owed should have been. If there were duplicated entries, they would have stuck out like a sore thumb. So even before the system came into question, basic accounting should have been used.
- duncans 3y ago
  Yes, you’d think so, but the Post Office “auditors” didn’t do that and just blindly believed what the computer said the balance should be.
  - forinti 3y ago
    And judges sent people to jail based on that. They should all lose their positions.