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"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 th

"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 ago
I 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 ago
  To be clear it’s the Post Office that’s accused of editing Fujitsu’s statements.
  - stefan_ 3y ago
    But it was Fujitsu staff acting as witnesses in trials.
    - PakG1 3y ago
      If 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
        I'm not sure whether the same Fujitsu people who wrote the witness statements were then questioned in a court room.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      GP's point is that it's not "the police" accused of editing the statements, because these were private criminal prosecutions (a unique feature of the british legal systems) in which the Post Office acted as the prosecutor. ie it's not a matter of trusting that "officers of the court" did this, because the prosecutor was not really an officer of the court, they were acting as a private citizen or (in this case) a representative of a private corporation. You are trusting that some rando working their 9-5 did not unduly "tweak" the words of the witnesses that are used as evidence to prosecute you.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that? From what I can tell from the inquiry testimony, the witness statements weren't exactly modified by the PO; they were effectively drafted by the PO's legal team. The lawyers produced pro-forma template statements, such that witnesses only had to fill in the blanks for names, dates and so on. Some witnesses balked at some of the language used in the template, e.g. words to the effect of "I believe the Horizon system was working completely correctly". In response, the legal team amended the template. The evidence produced to the inquiry can be viewed here: https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/ https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/ The inquiry has a youtube channel, where videos of the public hearings can be found: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg For what it's worth, I've never given a statement to police that was in my own words. In every case, the police interviewer led me through my testimony by asking a series of questions, and writing down my answer (in his own words).
marcosdumay 3y ago
It's not the first time I see news about people committing hideous crimes just to cover up some mild offense. It's always surprising, and always feels absurd and impossible, but it just keeps happening. I guess just like comedy and bad suspense movies, crimes always escalate.
- amatecha 3y ago
  Right, like the ppl who murder their partner rather than admit to cheating on them or being way in debt or whatever... So messed up :(
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    There are also less extreme examples: during a school trip with overnight stays, 2 of the teenage girls went out in the evening, even though it was forbidden. It was noticed after a while, so the teacher went looking for them. Just as he went out, they were about to come back(not too late). But they saw the teacher coming out - and hid themself, to not get in trouble in this moment. And this is of course when the real trouble started, because now the search started for real, with informing police about missing female students, big search etc. Coming out right at the beginning would have meant been giving a warning ... but the hiding because of fear for the trouble made the trouble very big and got them close to being expelled. And anger from the others, because from then, everything was less fun with the teachers ..
neilv 3y ago
"The coverup is worse than the crime" is a terrible effect. But it can happen from: * smaller-fry butt-covering (e.g., lower-level function trying to cover their own butt, putting larger org at risk of much higher cost to the org); * arrogance (e.g., individual/org thinks they are in the right and justified in escalating countermeasures); * bully-like confidence (e.g., individual/org thinks they are powerful enough to get away with escalating the offense, to escape cost from the original offense). It's not unusual, especially on smaller scales (e.g., in companies without genuine cultures of trust and integrity, many people will try to internally suppress info about failures, committing worse and/or more harmful acts in the process).
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  This is actually how the Manson family murders started! They first injured Gary Hinman trying to get money from him- before the Tate murders. While he was injured they spent days first injuring him, and then debating how to keep him from going to the police for two days before he died.
  - neilv 3y ago
    Is there a chart of the rationality over time?
- chris_wot 3y ago
  There seemed to be a culture in Fujitsu where incompetent and judgemental people were allowed to rule the roost. The best example of this is the testimony of one Peter Sewell, who never met one of the victims but who, in an email, called him a “nasty chap” and that he was out to “rubbish the FJ name”. You can see how he realises the enormity of his stupidity in testimony and tries to half heartedly defend himself (unsuccessfully): https://youtu.be/fGCsvjYNWr0?si=q-ss0T35RFOecv7n https://youtu.be/fGCsvjYNWr0?si=q-ss0T35RFOecv7n
  - neilv 3y ago
    > its [sic] up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity Sounds like he was using a different sense of the term "integrity" than I was. Figuratively, like integrity of a physical barrier, to the (claimed) attack of this other person.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
> How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? A massive contract for the entire postal service of which a number of government managers? On top of which Fujitsu provides software for a huge swath of other UK government agencies like NHS? So not only are they protecting a huge contract, but they were also covering up the fact that they lied and people ended up going to jail, committing suicide, etc. Aside from the criminal and civil liabilities - that would generate substantial political outrage and is the sort of thing that would shed a lot of unwanted light on the contracts, how they were selected, etc. Light nobody wanted. This literally caused deaths - people committed suicide because of the shame and debt and utter destruction of their careers.
EasyMark 3y ago
It's terrible that it's starting to look more and more like they would rather let people go to prison rather than just fix the software and make everyone whole before it got out of hand.
- ikidd 3y ago
  Prison? Heck, 4 people committed suicide over the course of this malfeasance and there's be a pile of bankruptcies and divorces. If they can prove what seems to have obviously happened here, there should be a pile of jail time involved.
snickerbockers 3y ago
>when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? There are a lot of programmers who seem to think it would be a horrific miscarriage of justice for somebody to be held responsible for the behavior of their own computer programs.
raffraffraff 3y ago
It does seem to go far deeper than a single contract for a single piece of poorly written software. Paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-of-horizon-was-tony-benn-2klcjnjtf https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-... Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/aaJyc https://archive.is/aaJyc Summary: In the 1960s, the government merged a bunch of companies "at gunpoint", creating behemoths like British Leyland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland) and ICL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite...) that were to compete with international giants. ICL couldn't beat IBM, but the government were committed to "buying British". That left the government with shit computers and systems. It still didn't help ICL, so in 1981 they faced bankruptcy. Since the government was the biggest user of ICL systems, civil servants persuaded Thatcher that "if ICL went bust, the government would grind to a halt". So ICL was rescued, with the aid of trusted Japanese tech firm Fujitsu. ICL lost its monopoly status, but was deeply embedded in the British state. You know the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Well in the British Government, replace "IBM" with "ICL". In 1995 the British government decided to automate their social welfare system. "Project Pathway" was a disaster. It got dumped 4 years later, but the Post Office still went ahead and used it, this time calling it "Project Horizon". According to insiders, everybody knew it was a "bag of shit". By now, ICL was fully owned by Fujitsu, who told the Blair government that if they didn’t sign the deal, ICL would collapse. So the deal was signed. And what a mess for all involved. This isn't an isolated case though. ICL/Fujitsu built another system for the Cabinet Office in No. 10, for highly classified material. It was absolute trash, taking half an our to boot, and Ministers refused to use it. They dumped the system, prompting Fujitsu to sue for breach of contract. But, even as the Cabinet Office was decommissioning it, another branch of government was buying it. Why? Partly because of EU rules, departments couldn't share their experiences with a given supplier or system. If a department knew that ICL/Fujitsu sucked, it might influence future contracts "and everyone would be sued". Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.
- ddalex 3y ago
  > because of EU rules Citation needed.
LoveMortuus 3y ago
People have actually died because of this, yet these still don't take it seriously and take the responsibility for it... How much longer will they drag this through the dirt, because the families of the deceased can finally have peace?

ldoughty 3y ago

I 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 ago
To be clear it’s the Post Office that’s accused of editing Fujitsu’s statements.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  But it was Fujitsu staff acting as witnesses in trials.
  - PakG1 3y ago
    If 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
      I'm not sure whether the same Fujitsu people who wrote the witness statements were then questioned in a court room.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    GP's point is that it's not "the police" accused of editing the statements, because these were private criminal prosecutions (a unique feature of the british legal systems) in which the Post Office acted as the prosecutor. ie it's not a matter of trusting that "officers of the court" did this, because the prosecutor was not really an officer of the court, they were acting as a private citizen or (in this case) a representative of a private corporation. You are trusting that some rando working their 9-5 did not unduly "tweak" the words of the witnesses that are used as evidence to prosecute you.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that? From what I can tell from the inquiry testimony, the witness statements weren't exactly modified by the PO; they were effectively drafted by the PO's legal team. The lawyers produced pro-forma template statements, such that witnesses only had to fill in the blanks for names, dates and so on. Some witnesses balked at some of the language used in the template, e.g. words to the effect of "I believe the Horizon system was working completely correctly". In response, the legal team amended the template. The evidence produced to the inquiry can be viewed here: https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/ https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/ The inquiry has a youtube channel, where videos of the public hearings can be found: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg For what it's worth, I've never given a statement to police that was in my own words. In every case, the police interviewer led me through my testimony by asking a series of questions, and writing down my answer (in his own words).

marcosdumay 3y ago

It's not the first time I see news about people committing hideous crimes just to cover up some mild offense. It's always surprising, and always feels absurd and impossible, but it just keeps happening. I guess just like comedy and bad suspense movies, crimes always escalate.

amatecha 3y ago
Right, like the ppl who murder their partner rather than admit to cheating on them or being way in debt or whatever... So messed up :(
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  There are also less extreme examples: during a school trip with overnight stays, 2 of the teenage girls went out in the evening, even though it was forbidden. It was noticed after a while, so the teacher went looking for them. Just as he went out, they were about to come back(not too late). But they saw the teacher coming out - and hid themself, to not get in trouble in this moment. And this is of course when the real trouble started, because now the search started for real, with informing police about missing female students, big search etc. Coming out right at the beginning would have meant been giving a warning ... but the hiding because of fear for the trouble made the trouble very big and got them close to being expelled. And anger from the others, because from then, everything was less fun with the teachers ..

neilv 3y ago

"The coverup is worse than the crime" is a terrible effect. But it can happen from: * smaller-fry butt-covering (e.g., lower-level function trying to cover their own butt, putting larger org at risk of much higher cost to the org); * arrogance (e.g., individual/org thinks they are in the right and justified in escalating countermeasures); * bully-like confidence (e.g., individual/org thinks they are powerful enough to get away with escalating the offense, to escape cost from the original offense). It's not unusual, especially on smaller scales (e.g., in companies without genuine cultures of trust and integrity, many people will try to internally suppress info about failures, committing worse and/or more harmful acts in the process).

droopyEyelids 3y ago
This is actually how the Manson family murders started! They first injured Gary Hinman trying to get money from him- before the Tate murders. While he was injured they spent days first injuring him, and then debating how to keep him from going to the police for two days before he died.
- neilv 3y ago
  Is there a chart of the rationality over time?
chris_wot 3y ago
There seemed to be a culture in Fujitsu where incompetent and judgemental people were allowed to rule the roost. The best example of this is the testimony of one Peter Sewell, who never met one of the victims but who, in an email, called him a “nasty chap” and that he was out to “rubbish the FJ name”. You can see how he realises the enormity of his stupidity in testimony and tries to half heartedly defend himself (unsuccessfully): https://youtu.be/fGCsvjYNWr0?si=q-ss0T35RFOecv7n https://youtu.be/fGCsvjYNWr0?si=q-ss0T35RFOecv7n
- neilv 3y ago
  > its [sic] up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity Sounds like he was using a different sense of the term "integrity" than I was. Figuratively, like integrity of a physical barrier, to the (claimed) attack of this other person.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

> How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? A massive contract for the entire postal service of which a number of government managers? On top of which Fujitsu provides software for a huge swath of other UK government agencies like NHS? So not only are they protecting a huge contract, but they were also covering up the fact that they lied and people ended up going to jail, committing suicide, etc. Aside from the criminal and civil liabilities - that would generate substantial political outrage and is the sort of thing that would shed a lot of unwanted light on the contracts, how they were selected, etc. Light nobody wanted. This literally caused deaths - people committed suicide because of the shame and debt and utter destruction of their careers.

EasyMark 3y ago

It's terrible that it's starting to look more and more like they would rather let people go to prison rather than just fix the software and make everyone whole before it got out of hand.

ikidd 3y ago
Prison? Heck, 4 people committed suicide over the course of this malfeasance and there's be a pile of bankruptcies and divorces. If they can prove what seems to have obviously happened here, there should be a pile of jail time involved.

snickerbockers 3y ago

>when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? There are a lot of programmers who seem to think it would be a horrific miscarriage of justice for somebody to be held responsible for the behavior of their own computer programs.

raffraffraff 3y ago

It does seem to go far deeper than a single contract for a single piece of poorly written software. Paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-of-horizon-was-tony-benn-2klcjnjtf https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-... Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/aaJyc https://archive.is/aaJyc Summary: In the 1960s, the government merged a bunch of companies "at gunpoint", creating behemoths like British Leyland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland) and ICL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite...) that were to compete with international giants. ICL couldn't beat IBM, but the government were committed to "buying British". That left the government with shit computers and systems. It still didn't help ICL, so in 1981 they faced bankruptcy. Since the government was the biggest user of ICL systems, civil servants persuaded Thatcher that "if ICL went bust, the government would grind to a halt". So ICL was rescued, with the aid of trusted Japanese tech firm Fujitsu. ICL lost its monopoly status, but was deeply embedded in the British state. You know the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Well in the British Government, replace "IBM" with "ICL". In 1995 the British government decided to automate their social welfare system. "Project Pathway" was a disaster. It got dumped 4 years later, but the Post Office still went ahead and used it, this time calling it "Project Horizon". According to insiders, everybody knew it was a "bag of shit". By now, ICL was fully owned by Fujitsu, who told the Blair government that if they didn’t sign the deal, ICL would collapse. So the deal was signed. And what a mess for all involved. This isn't an isolated case though. ICL/Fujitsu built another system for the Cabinet Office in No. 10, for highly classified material. It was absolute trash, taking half an our to boot, and Ministers refused to use it. They dumped the system, prompting Fujitsu to sue for breach of contract. But, even as the Cabinet Office was decommissioning it, another branch of government was buying it. Why? Partly because of EU rules, departments couldn't share their experiences with a given supplier or system. If a department knew that ICL/Fujitsu sucked, it might influence future contracts "and everyone would be sued". Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.

ddalex 3y ago
> because of EU rules Citation needed.

LoveMortuus 3y ago

People have actually died because of this, yet these still don't take it seriously and take the responsibility for it... How much longer will they drag this through the dirt, because the families of the deceased can finally have peace?