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Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- msie 3y agoAll the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail. All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and malpractice.
- dougSF70 3y ago100% Agree...prison time, public excoriation and significant financial penalties.
- droopyEyelids 3y agoIn china they have a saying "A punishment milder than death would not sufficiently assuage public indignation" https://www.tiktok.com/@chinesedemystified/video/7112311651390557486 https://www.tiktok.com/@chinesedemystified/video/71123116513... I only post this as a fascinating example of how different Western and Chinese perspectives can be. Not that these people would be killed in China, or that it would be justice if they were- but we don't even have this in our vocabulary!
- jpgvm 3y agoI doubt they would have been executed in this case but for heinous corporate crime China doesn't hesitate to apply the death penalty to executives: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8375638.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8375638.stm
- plagiarist 3y agoWe have "death is too good for him" and the West, at least the US, has no shortage of bloodthirsty Calvinist Predestination believers who love to imagine people receiving punishment.
- SoftTalker 3y agoOdd that so often here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... yet whenever some CEO or high level official is caught in malfeasance, we insist that "sending them to jail" is the only proper response.
- nothercastle 3y agoYes prison does deter white collar crime. Petty crime probably not but this kind of shit absolutely.
- dylan604 3y agoi'd posit that you're jumping to a conclusion. we've never actually tried prosecuting/convicting/incarcerating CEOs or other high level officials, so we don't know what the deterrent on that would actually be. we need to run the experiments through to the end to see.
- WalterBright 3y agoKen Lay of Enron.
- jzb 3y agoThe exception that proves the rule. It would have been more accurate for OP to have said we haven't tried prosecuting and imprisoning CEOs, etc, with the same vigor we apply to street crime. Every great once in a while, yes, we actually prosecute the hell out of a few executives. But it's hardly commonplace.
- teddyh 3y agoI suspect that it’s not really the crimes, per se, which makes a CEO be prosecuted. Like Joseph Nacchio.
- bloqs 3y agoI think because both things can be correct. Prison is a deterrent to people who participate in society to a high level, but not to those who fundamentally reject society as they are at the bottom of the pyramid.
- vladgur 3y agogiven how much a prior conviction makes employment difficult here in the US, how would you quantify financial impact not just of the time served, but also the reputational impact it has on your income.
- dylan604 3y agoyou pick a really big number, and 10x it. it's all part of the negotiating. let a jury decide the final number. some people will tell you some formula about salary at the time, calculating anticipated increases in salary of that time, blah blah. screw a bunch of that. make it hurt. however, isn't this a UK issue?
- kelnos 3y agoPresumably their record would also get expunged? Not sure how that works in the UK though.
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoBugs are inevitable. The real issue is with the post office management that prosecuted people they knew there was a good chance were innocent, withheld evidence, falsified evidence, and harassed journalists investigating. What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells > witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court were then edited by the Post Office as it sought to maintain the line that the system was working well as it pursued innocent people through the courts.
- arp242 3y agoI have generally found that there's not that much relation between people's stated beliefs and their actual every-day behaviour. By and large, I do think their beliefs are genuine and heart-felt, and that they're not faking them. It's just that it doesn't really influence their daily behaviour all that much. Generally people are motivated by the incentives of the moment, emotion of the moment, and that kind of thing. I am no exception to this by the way. People often assume that if someone has the "right set of beliefs" (whatever that "right set" is, which may or may not be religious) that they're also a good person. I'm not saying there is zero correlation for all people, but typically it's very small at best, if it even exists at all.
- at_a_remove 3y agoWasn't there a study of ethicists which pointed out that even ethicists were not particularly more ethical in their day to day behavior? More and more, I have come to regard what people state as their beliefs or guiding principles as some kind of mission statement buried on a corporate website. It's more congruent with reality.
- RangerScience 3y agoRelated, started realizing that "being a principled person" doesn't really mean "having (stated) principles", it means belief that you can (and should) have principles that you're trying to apply consistently and continuously. Lots of people have principles. Not so many people are principled.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoI've been listening to this podcast about it. Very messed up how these sub-postmasters were treated. https://open.spotify.com/show/6BL7LWzXRdmwa0JVXOChQL?si=51p1jX0cScyDganxnEclCw https://open.spotify.com/show/6BL7LWzXRdmwa0JVXOChQL?si=51p1...
- throw7 3y ago"...witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court were then edited by the Post Office..." I hope there is serious jail time and fines for the persons that did this. Bonkers.
- IronWolve 3y agoI would think re-writing witness statements is a crime.
- infamouscow 3y agoOr off a tall building.
- CM30 3y agoTo an extent, this is basically the norm for most software projects. Often you know there are bugs and issues in a piece of software, but don't consider them enough of a blocker to delay the release date for. That works okay for something like game development where the stakes are very low. That does not work for a piece of software where people's lives and finances are on the line, especially not when you still accuse people of committing criminal actions knowing full well that it could be the fault of your system's bugs rather than their actions. Some might question if this 'move fast, break things and ignore bugs that aren't thought to be complete showstoppers' is the right move, but the way they handled it on a business and legal level was definitely the wrong one, and the majority of the problems came from the dodgy actions of the execs and business folks trying to cover things up.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoMore/related: Fixing Horizon bugs would have been too costly, Post Office inquiry told https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39039712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39039712 Fujitsu is sorry that its software helped send innocent people to prison https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39038263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39038263
- orbisvicis 3y ago"I [Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu's European division] am surprised that that detail was not included in the witness statements given by Fujitsu staff to the Post Office and I have seen some evidence of editing witness statements by others" How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? At this point I'm starting to suspect some underlying malfeasance yet to be discovered.
- ldoughty 3y agoI found that interesting as well. It shifts the blame away from software and a cover up by Fujitsu to more of a perception/reputation/political cover up by the Post Office. Fujitsu still has some blame, but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that? If I gave a written statement to a police officer, is it my responsibility to follow up and make sure they didn't edit my statement? Of course... if I found out, it is my responsibility to raise a flag, but I should be able to trust agents of the courts to not alter evidence.
- jahewson 3y agoTo be clear it’s the Post Office that’s accused of editing Fujitsu’s statements.
- stefan_ 3y agoBut it was Fujitsu staff acting as witnesses in trials.
- PakG1 3y agoIf it was the Post Office editing Fujitsu's statements, who better than Fujitsu staff to confirm as a trial witness what was in the original pre-edited statements?
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
- WalterBright 3y agoPeople who frame others for a crime should be subject to the same sanctions as the crime itself.
- yieldcrv 3y agoThe real question is who is this happening to now? Its like you go to a prison and everyone says "I'm innocent" and the officer sarcastically dismisses them saying "you and everyone else", the irony being..... that's plausible?
- csan 3y agoMore than plausible; it's happening again right now within the UK justice system itself - https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk
- tsol 3y agoThis is kind of the idea behind the innocence project. I'm not sure if they have a certain focus but they work on cases of people falsely accused.
- tomcar288 3y agotravesty of justice doesn't begin to describe it. there must be something else wrong besides just the software? how could the justice department just blindly trust the software accounting without any other evidence.
- nabla9 3y agoDid you read the article? It was not justice department (aka Crown Prosecutor) prosecuting those people. In UK private prosecution for crimes is possible. Probably a major reason for this kind of bullshit goes on.
- kelnos 3y agoWait, "private" meaning a non-government entity such as a corporation can prosecute someone, without any involvement of the public justice system, and send people to jail? I assume not just any private entity is empowered to do this, but still... Wow, it's bad enough here in the US that we have a private prison system, but that really takes the cake.
- nabla9 3y agoYes. Really weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions
- 123pie123 3y agoto me, there nothing really wrong with the concept of private prosecutions whats happened here is a total fuck up of justice, with many many people lying and the fact people/ judges have believed computer printouts as fact - ffs
- 123pie123 3y agoI must admit I'm now leaning over to not having private prosecutions based this fuck up, the PO have 100% abused the system. which means other larger companies could do the same - maybe only CPS should bring cases
- JohnFen 3y agoIf bugs of that severity were known from the start, then (taking the most generous interpretation), it was incompetence of the highest degree that the software was released.
- jocoda 3y agoThere is no way to make good the harm inflicted, and I'm skeptical that anyone except, maybe the innocent, are going to be punished. The central villain of this shit show is the Post Office. The history of the project shows that - from initial procurement onwards. Poorly implemented by ICL, a UK company, taken over by Fujitsu as some sort of favour to the UK government. The developers are guilty but this is just another government project, a disaster, but that's apparently nothing really unusual. The minor villains are the members of the lynch mob. Most were probably ignorant of the facts and so, filled with righteous indignation they did whatever was necessary to make sure that the evil thieves got theirs. How do you make something like this right? I don't think you can. Shit happens. The villains will keep their heads down for a while, and then like much of politics, will carry on because it seems that there are no consequences anymore.
- akira2501 3y ago> How do you make something like this right? If only there was a single person ensconced with supreme authority and a duty to protect the realm around.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoIt seems they shirked any responsibility to the actual governance of the realm decades ago.
- alt227 3y ago>How do you make something like this right? The UK government reckon it takes about £600,000 each https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66843548 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66843548
- kelnos 3y ago> How do you make something like this right? You can't make it fully right, since you can't give people back the time they spent wrongfully imprisoned. But you can at least throw a truckload of cash at them to make things a little less awful. But yeah... these people will never get their lives back, and it will never be right. This is mainly why I am against capital punishment. Even if we do believe we should have the right to say who lives and who dies (I'm not convinced of that, but many people are), we do not have the ability to say with any certainty that anyone is actually guilty. While the state can later recognize a mistake and let someone out of prison, they can't bring someone back who they executed.
- thinkingemote 3y agoThings still going on right now: Prosecutions are still going on but are being led by the Crown Prosecution Service (vs. the post office). Fujitsu are continuing to proving the CPS / post office with data that they have been doing for years (and possibly still providing witness statements, I dunno). Subpostmasters still complain about bugs in the horizon software causing balance errors. Subpostmasters still get fined and have to pay the Post Office ( automatically deducted from their salary) for any shortfalls that occur.
- jiggawatts 3y agoThis issue has been public knowledge for years. How is this possible!?
- amiga386 3y agoThe contract to be an SPM makes you liable for all losses, no matter how they are caused, which includes blatant faults of the accounting/ePOS software. It's the ultimate case of moral hazard. Why fix the broken software if it's only some other sucker who's on the hook for it?
- heads 3y agoI taught in a private school for a while. In England and Wales the law says that your employment “contract” is simply the verbal, written, or implied agreement to work there and the document enumerating the details — the written statement of employment particulars which is basically the thing you or I would call “the contract” — doesn’t have to be supplied until up to two months after you’ve started work. My employment particulars came the day of the two month deadline. They included a clause that said that the school had the final say on any claim brought by a pupil or their family against me for loss or damage and that any compensation would automatically be deducted from my salary. Unsurprisingly, I did not agree to this clause and did not sign the document! The school also refused to negotiate and I worked there for two years in a kind of contract limbo. I’ve gone back to being a SWE now. I was lucky to not be beholden to one industry like my fellow teachers were. I can completely see how a sub-postmaster, without a fallback career, can get cornered into accepting some ludicrously unfair terms.
- worik 3y ago"Patterson also told Parliament members that Fujitsu has "a moral obligation" to contribute to the compensation for victims." How often do you hear a suit talk of their "moral obligation"? That really struck me. So true So often we (computer programmers) get to walk away free and clear from the cluster fucks that arrive from our mistakes
- metabagel 3y agoClearly, there must have been systemic issues at Fujitsu which allowed the accounting software to fail so spectacularly.
- hermitcrab 3y agoHorizons was based on a failed benefits system and it was widely known that the quality of the software team was not good. IIRC it didn't even use ACID transactions, so glitches and power outages could cause big problems. What sort of company would put their Z team on a multi-billion pound contract?
- wbl 3y agoEvery company that wants to succeed in the bodyshop world. Government contracting is broken in the Anglosphere. Parties contracting out software tend to do it because they cannot manage the project themselves, but they can pay a lot of attention to the financials. So you need to cut costs and just meet the delivery bar that the customer tests for, not actually exceed expectations. You're not going to get credit for the next one.
- Twirrim 3y agoGovernment procurement trends towards broken in most countries. You start out with a nice and clean set of rules, easy to validate. Stuff like "make sure the c-suite aren't relatives of the government officials making the decision". Time goes by, something goes wrong. Press has a field day. Politicians get embarrassed and add a rule to ensure they can't be embarrassed that way again. For example, maybe the company chosen was in a dire financial situation, and goes bankrupt, leaving the government up the creek without a paddle. The politicians get embarrassed and add a rule to the procurement process that requires the company getting the contract must demonstrate that they are a going concern. Over time, what started as a neat and clean system, ends up with the most convoluted and complicated sets of checks and balances known to man. Purchasing decisions that used to take a week, now take 6 months+, and require a significant outlay from the companies that are in the running. What you end up with is that very few companies can actually compete in the space, few of them have the financial resources to be able to make the kinds of outlay involved, nor take that kind of bet. The companies that remain in the field are those with the most skill at navigating through the ever changing government procurement processes, and deliver just enough of a solution to satisfy the government, without causing drama. You can practically guarantee this Fujitsu drama is going to cause yet more rules to be added to the procurement process, because politicians won't want to be embarrassed this way again. This is almost identical to the way a lot of software development works. So much organic growth. Something that started out completely sane, becomes a near impenetrable mess that practically guarantees bugs. We find edge cases and we fix them. We need to add extra functionality, so we just find a place that looks reasonably logical for it to go. Over and over, until "Wait, what....?" becomes the background sound of the office. At least in software, we can more easily reach a consensus that it's time to refactor, or completely gut and replace what has gone before. It often hurts us to a sufficient degree that we're motivated to do so. With governments, all the incentives are missing on the very people that need to be incentivised for it to be fixed. They don't want to have their name against a big re-do of the procurement process, and have it drop something that would have stopped the next disaster. Those are the kinds of things that opponents in an election will jump all over and tout as an example of why you're unfit to serve.
- bjornsing 3y agoIn England and Wales perverting the course of justice carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. IMHO this would be appropriate for the lawyers who rewrote those witness statements.
- londons_explore 3y agowitness statements are frequently collaboratively written/edited and then signed by the witness... I don't think collaboration or editing is in itself a crime - the crime is to sign a statement which you know to be untrue or deceiving.
- EasyMark 3y agoBut it seems pretty obvious these lawyers were covering up for their customers. That would fall under being fraudulent, no?
- denton-scratch 3y agoThe lawyers produced "template" statements, that witnesses were supposed to complete by filling in the blanks. These templates included various forms of words that they wanted included, e.g. to avoid having to prove in court, for each case, that the Horizon software was behaving correctly. I don't think that amounts to "covering up" - after all, these lawyers were paid advocates for their client, the Post Office. The real covering-up was the PO lawyers' failure to hand over to the defence evidence that might support the defence case. That's criminal (perverting the course of justice), and also, in the words of the appeal court judge, "an affront to justice".
- puzzledobserver 3y agoThe Wikipedia article on Paula Vennells tells me that the Post Office prosecuted 700 subpostmasters between 1999 and 2015 [0]. That works out to about one prosecution every 8 days. I do not know the baseline rate at which postmasters commit fraud or are prosecuted, but isn't one prosecution every 8 days an awfully high number? Shouldn't the Post Office have conducted some sort of internal investigation as soon as the frequency of prosecutions hit a number this high? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells
- puzzledobserver 3y ago> "In 2013, Vennells hired forensic accounting firm Second Sight, headed up by Ron Warmington, to investigate the Horizon software losses. Warmington discovered the system was flawed and faulty, but Vennells was unhappy with Warmington's report and terminated their contract." Inexcusable.
- conductr 3y agoYes totally but shouldn’t it have been the prosecution that hired forensic accountants in order to, well, prosecute
- ajcp 3y agoThe Post Office was the prosecution! That's what makes this even worse...
- cge 3y agoI get the impression that, no, forensic accountants were not used in the prosecutions, and they instead just relied on the software's accounting. From the bugs described, it seems like forensic accountants legitimately looking at specific cases would have been unable to confidently state that funds were missing.
- Eisenstein 3y agoIn the UK, private parties can prosecute people. The Post office was doing this. As a citizen of the USA, this is a completely alien concept to me. How can a corporation put a person in prison?
- csan 3y agoThere are dangerous flaws within the case management software used by the UK justice system itself - https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk
- dang 3y agoI've attempted to compile the HN threads on this. Can anybody find other significant ones? (It's interesting that there was one submission, with one comment, in 2012, and seemingly nothing for the next 7 years...) Fujitsu CEO Deposition – Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059302 - Jan 2024 (1 comment) Fixing Horizon bugs would have been too costly, Post Office inquiry told - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39039712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39039712 - Jan 2024 (59 comments) Fujitsu says it will pay compensation in UK Post Office scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023695 - Jan 2024 (26 comments) How a software glitch at the UK Post Office ruined lives - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010070 - Jan 2024 (326 comments) Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38983144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38983144 - Jan 2024 (8 comments) A TV Show Forced Britain's Devastating Post Office Scandal into the Light - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38951802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38951802 - Jan 2024 (168 comments) British Post Office Scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937705 - Jan 2024 (149 comments) How the Post Office's Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38931792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38931792 - Jan 2024 (4 comments) 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 - Jan 2024 (127 comments) Post Office Horizon Enquiry – Fujitsu Report on Eposs PinICL Task Force (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926582 - Jan 2024 (1 comment) Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38890468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38890468 - Jan 2024 (8 comments) Mr Bates vs. the Post Office - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38869011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38869011 - Jan 2024 (3 comments) What went wrong with Horizon: learning from the Post Office Trial - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38867712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38867712 - Jan 2024 (19 comments) UK Post Office: 700 Horizon software scandal victims to receive £600k each - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561428 - Sept 2023 (40 comments) After 20 years, the Post Office scandal cover-up is happening in plain sight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778486 - July 2023 (1 comment) The UK post office database scandal – “can't see the bug = user is a thief” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35837576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35837576 - May 2023 (2 comments) Hundreds of lives ruined by faulty UK Post Office computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35792896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35792896 - May 2023 (4 comments) Ex UK Post Office staff tell inquiry of stress of IT scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394685 - Feb 2022 (2 comments) Post Office scandal: Public inquiry to examine wrongful convictions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329668 - Feb 2022 (149 comments) Post Office scandal: 'I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329510 - Feb 2022 (2 comments) Bad software sent postal workers to jail - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26973583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26973583 - April 2021 (1 comment) Convicted Post Office workers have names cleared - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924882 - April 2021 (187 comments) UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913037 - April 2021 (284 comments) UK legal system assumes that computers don't have bugs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25518936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25518936 - Dec 2020 (24 comments) Post Office scandal: Postmasters celebrate victory against convictions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24661321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24661321 - Oct 2020 (2 comments) Bankruptcy, jail, ruined lives: inside the Post Office scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440476 - Sept 2020 (1 comment) Postmasters were prosecuted using unreliable evidence - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23454606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23454606 - June 2020 (2 comments) Faults in Post Office accounting system led to workers being convicted of theft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795219 - Dec 2019 (104 comments) Post Office hires accountants to review sub-postmasters' computer claims - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4143107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4143107 - June 2012 (1 comment)
- hermitcrab 3y agoI think it was more than 'bugs'. The whole architectural design was inadequate. See Computerphile video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJm9ZYqL10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJm9ZYqL10 (C++ programmer, but not an expert of distributed systems - would be interested to hear from someone that is)
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoReconciling and accounting isn't difficult. Is the intent accuracy? Was money a motive? I don't know the full story but cooking the books is how you skim. And once you're dirty, in order to come clean you need to expose everything.
- amiga386 3y agoThe intent was to keep their chummy contract with government going and keep riding the gravy train, no matter how shit the software was. So far, I haven't seen evidence of anyone at Fujitsu inserting fake records in order to enrich the company - FYI the contract was such that the government took basically no risk, Fujitsu fronted the money to pay for Horizon's development, and in return Fujitsu gets a cut of all transactions. All they need to do is keep the sweet deal going. What I have seen evidence of is them clearly detecting bugs, and inserting fake records to make the numbers reconcile, but still being so thick that their support staff didn't notice the fake numbers didn't add up either. https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html Their motive appears to keep the corporate gravy train going, so yes it's personal enrichment, and to fudge the numbers on the sly so nobody questions Fujitsu's competence to run their system... but not cook the books directly. Then of course the Post Office would prosecute the SPMs for discrepencies hallucinated by Fujitsu's broken accounting software, and not be curious or ask questions of Fujitsu, because then the Post Office bosses wouldn't get their performance-based bonuses. There's also straight up incompetence: https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/ https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/ > Chambers admitted to the Inquiry that despite being told the discrepancies had occurred on various occasions at the branch throughout the year, she only looked at the system information behind the most recent discrepancy. She also didn’t check to see if something similar had been reported by any other branch. Her “investigation”, from assignation to conclusion, took one hour sixteen minutes. > Chambers conceded that she didn’t know if it was an unknown system error was affecting the branch, and seemed to accept that her stark conclusion in 2013: “No fault in product” and “user” error, was misleading. She added: > “I don’t think I handled it terribly well. I was frustrated by it and I think that shows… because, you know, it really looked like there was a genuine problem… [but]… There was no sign of it.” > In summary, ten years ago, Anne Chambers appears not to have considered the possibility of unknown system problems, or prompted an investigation more advanced than what she could achieve within the limits of her knowledge and ability. Instead, after a quick squizz at a limited dataset she concluded there was no obvious problem, which meant there was no problem and the cause of the discrepancy was the Subpostmaster.
- iovrthoughtthis 3y agothis is crazy cant help but consider that fujitsu is an SI that competes with infosys and this really undermines fujitsu in the minds of british tac payers...
- amiga386 3y agoThe UK government took Fujitsu off their "preferred vendors" list. But they're not allowed, by law, to exclude a company completely from new contracts. They tried to cancel another Fujitsu contract, but Fujitsu took them to court and won, so the government have to keep accepting their shit service.
- cannonpr 3y agoHow material were the post offices “overbooking” of profits by false sales registered via this bug ? How plausible is it that in-fact the internal narrative was that the post office was wildly more profitable than it was, but that they just need to crack down on this minor theft problem that they have via prosecutions while at the same time padding their figures a bit via postmasters money ?
- amiga386 3y agoIt's worse than that. Post Office investigators got performance-related bonuses for every successful prosecution. They were chomping at the bit to prosecute anyone who showed the slightest discrepancy, and all their Christmases came at once after Horizon was installed. Moral hazard, cobra effect, if all you have is a hammer, etc. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/10/post-office-executives-paid-bonuses-postmasters-conviction/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/10/post-office-exec...
- buggeryorkshire 3y agoJesus Christ I didn't know that. Wow.
- denton-scratch 3y agoTo be fair, Sewell (Fujitsu security team manager) was asked about these bonuses, and denied that they related to prosecutions; they were just for doing their job well. To be unfair, the job they were tasked with was providing evidence to support the prosecutions. And Sewell was a strikingly unconvincing witness; "It was 2008. I don't remember." Apparently he remembered almost nothing that might have a bearing on the inquiry.
- amiga386 3y agoIn this case I was talking about the Post Office investigators, not Fujitsu, although it's also very depressing about the Fujitsu side of things. From the article: > Mr Thomas, of the Post Office security team, told the inquiry there were “bonus objectives”, including a 40 per cent “loss recovery objective”, available to his team. > Asked if that influenced his behaviour as an investigator, he said: “I’d probably be lying if I said no because… it was part of the business, the culture of the business of recoveries or even under the terms of a postmaster’s contract with the contracts manager.” > In an email sent by Mr Thomas in 2021 to Nick Read, the Post Office’s chief executive, and which was disclosed to the inquiry, he wrote: “My yearly objectives that were bonus worthy at the time were based on numbers of successful prosecutions and recovery amounts of money to the business.” > He also discussed “a proceeds of crime unit within Post Office Ltd that ensured some of these individuals lost their homes and families”. > Mr Thomas was the lead investigator in the case of sub-postmaster Julian Wilson, who was convicted of false accounting and died of cancer five years before his conviction was overturned. > Mr Thomas did not include any of the problems Mr Wilson had reported with the Horizon system when writing his report after interviewing him in 2008. Years later, Mr Thomas told a colleague he was “pleased” to have his hands on documents relating to Mr Wilson’s case because he wanted to prove there was “no ‘Case for the Justice of Thieving Subposters’” and that they “were all crooks”.
- cesther 3y agoThe documentary that accompanied the recent ITV Drama "Mr Bates vs The Post Office" provides a good overview. Listening to the actual people impacted by this is heart breaking. Someone has put it on YT, also available in the torrent bundle on PB. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHIr5fqfqKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHIr5fqfqKs
- DarkmSparks 3y agoTLDR: UK legal system has no legitimacy. The whole thing is just yet another example of the consequences of letting lawyers lie as much as they want without consequences in order to win.
- calzone5116 3y ago> "We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters. For that we are truly sorry." Every time some CEO issues an apology i can't help but not take it seriously because it reminds of following scene: https://youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
- jacquesm 3y agoSo, when your new software system identifies fraud where none was seen before the onus is really on you to check, recheck and triple-check your results before you start ruining people's lives. Those working on the present crop of AI classifiers should take note because those too can, will and probably already are being used to figure out who to target for surveillance, perform facial matching and will likely be embedded in AI based legal software. We're not that far from 'computer says guilty' and even if it isn't the computer that says so directly all it needs to do is give the wrong kind of person enough cover that they believe they are doing the right thing. Something very similar happened in the Netherlands with the tax office and I suspect that if and when the IND here gets turned inside out we'll find a lot more of this sort of stuff.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- justinclift 3y agoSeems like the senior Post Office staff purposely "perverted the course of justice" here. Doesn't that mean they should be facing criminal charges?
- switch007 3y agoYes but it gets very awkward very quickly when you realise it’s the government who own and have responsibility for the Post Office. Why stop at the Post Office directors? And who runs the Crown Prosecution Service? Ah yes, the government.
- hackerlight 3y ago> Why stop at the Post Office directors? Because the principal and agent aren't the same thing. If an agent commits a crime without the knowledge of the principal, then only the agent should have criminal liability.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoYou forgot about the oversight responsibilities, though. Just because you delegate work to an agent doesn't automatically mean that you are not responsible for the consequences of any action of the agent. If what you say was true not a single company ever would be successfully prosecuted because companies don't do anything on their own, all their actions are through their agents.
- switch007 3y agoIs that how English law works, or is that your moral opinion? IANAL so genuinely curious
- denton-scratch 3y agoIANAL also; but I don't believe English law works like that. The actions your agent performs while acting under your instructions are, on the face of it, your actions. That doesn't protect your agent from liability, but you may have to defend allegations that you were e.g. recklessly negligent.
- Zuiii 3y agoWhat infuriates me is that the courts decided to convict people when there was no evidence of malpractice other than that damn software. What happened to innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt? Where the fucking proof? Why are judges ignoring the very foundations upon which our justice systems were built?
- wonderwonder 3y agoIs this a case where the software just had bugs in it like most production software that are patched with new releases that introduce new bugs and as such is a useful scape goat for the defense and the media has no idea what they are talking about and decided to run with it? Or is it the bugs are egregious and clearly responsible for the convictions? Please note I have no dog in this fight, just generally curious if anyone knows more?
- danjc 3y agoAlso, products named Horizon are problematic.
- whythre 3y ago? I don’t follow. Problematic is a pretty vague descriptor. What’s wrong with the name?
- iwik2_w 3y agoI think software industry should take responsibility for software Bugs, especially that nowa that affect peoples lifes
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoThe post office edited witness statements to secure prosecutions? Every single prosecutor needs to be considered for perverting the course of justice.
- pjmlp 3y agoBesides the sad part of destroyed people's lives, this is a good example of how software quality matters to the society and liability is a must.
- chernevik 3y agoI don't understand how a lawyer who revised witness testimony is walking around free. Toss in jail and throw away the key.