> and it seems very odd that the prosecution included no successful rebuttal that I have seen. Perhaps such cases were the ones the PO chose not to press??

> and it seems very odd that the prosecution included no successful rebuttal that I have seen. Perhaps such cases were the ones the PO chose not to press?? Indeed. I do understand what you mean about the actual (legal) prosecution, but if you'll allow me to use the word in it's more ordinary sense.. to pursue... then Bates himself is a case in point, no? He is a technologically and legally savvy person. He would not sign anything that made him legally responsible for system errors and when he challenged the PO with technical talk they just silently fired him. I think what we see here is a prototype of a particularly nasty kind of "techno bullying" that seeks to bamboozle and intimidate ordinary people who put faith in technology. People assume that they are not being lied to by "experts". Those days have sadly gone. These are bullies who will only prosecute people who are too poorly educated to fight back. This is exactly the sort of thing that disgusts me. And it disgusted the late Ross Anderson too. The change we need is in the law, to take away the weapons that these bullies use to extract and intimidate... we must assume that systems and those who build, maintain and defend them are not disinterested, and so technical or expert accounts cannot be trusted prima facie The burden should be reversed. Another thing I'd like to see, is the legal ability to strip people of qualifications and accolades. If you're a chartered engineer and you lie to protect company profits then you can already get ousted from a professional body. I think if engineers or managers lie or cover up technical facts in court they should lose their status, MBA, or masters degree. Otherwise we're allowing digital tech, especially around security, to become a bullshitter's profession.