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For people unaware I'll give a quick summary. The post office in the UK has always relied on an extensive network of "subpostmasters" to run local branches. T

For people unaware I'll give a quick summary. The post office in the UK has always relied on an extensive network of "subpostmasters" to run local branches. These are often people who run small businesses or shops and add basic postal services such as delivering packages, selling stamps etc to an existing shop. This is especially important as a service in small towns etc. In 1999 the government brought in Fujitsu as an IT provider and insisted these subpostmasters adopt a fujitsu-developed accounting system called "Horizon" to account for the postal activities of these shops. They then (relentlessly) investigated and prosecuted an extraordinary number of these people for fraud based on the outputs of this system, which turned out to have been reporting incorrectly based of software bugs. This was covered up. About 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted for fraud and theft and over a hundred sent to prison even though as far as I am aware there is literally no evidence other than horizon of any wrongdoing by any of them. The facts are finally emerging and justice is starting to be done although the perpetrators of the malicious prosecutions and the coverup have so far got off and victims have still not received compensation. Here is a slightly more extensive summary https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-explained-everything-you-need-to-know https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-s...

Loughla 2y ago
This says they'll get compensation, so that's good. But somebody needs to go to jail for covering this up. A lot of somebody's probably.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  Yeah, I really hope some higher-ups at both the national postal service and Fujistu go to jail over this. And how the hell did the post office come to believe 700+ sub-post-masters were committing fraud? It strikes me as patently ridiculous that such a large number of people would be doing similar small-time accounting fraud. Nobody thought "huh, might be the systems?"
  - JusticeJuice 2y ago
    A lot of people who aren't software developers have blind faith that software is always correct. Inversely, software developers never trust software to be correct.
    - dpwm 2y ago
      In England and Wales, at least, there’s even a legal principle that information produced by software is correct unless it is proven otherwise. [0] [0] https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/32105/ https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/32105/
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Sure, and once the cases made it to court, I can see jurors taking the software evidence at face value. In this case, somebody should have pumped the brakes well before criminal proceedings. But, it seems like the higher-ups didn't want to look bad, so buried evidence and charged anyways, which should be criminal (no idea if it is, I'm no expert in UK law).
  - ziggy_star 2y ago
    Here, may it serve you well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel)
  - janice1999 2y ago
    > Nobody thought "huh, might be the systems?" The Post Office knew their system was broken from at least 2003. Their response was to bury the report and threaten the consultant. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Yeah that genuinely boggles my mind about the whole thing. Less than 20 frauds I would say fine. 700+ is as you say patently ridiculous. It just is very obviously wrong and it’s very disheartening that noone in the senior management at the post office or fujitsu pumped the breaks at that point and tried to do a root cause analysis
- pas 2y ago
  > A lot of somebody's probably. very tangential, very important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65FRxE7uMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65FRxE7uMc
- janice1999 2y ago
  > This says they'll get compensation, so that's good. It looks like they will get compensation this time, but only after being featured on an ITV TV drama. The first time around the government drip fed compensation and massively reduced figures, including to people who served jail time for crimes that never happened. Many of the victims are old and some were made homeless because of the Post Office. It was just extra cruelty and maliciousness on top of the injustice they had suffered. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61187241 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61187241
tedivm 2y ago
It's worth noting that some of the victims of this died before it came out. To say this ruined lives is an understatement. It's also important to know that the UK government knew about the flaws with the program but covered them up rather than dealing with the issue. It wasn't until a documentary came out about the issue that the public outcry grew large enough to actual prompt a full investigation.
- croes 2y ago
  Not just, they committed suicide because of that.
FlyingAvatar 2y ago
Serious questions: If there were so many of them, how did the justice system not figure out this was flawed much sooner? How did the legal representation for these subpostmasters fail to be able to prove their innocence?
- gravescale 2y ago
  The UK justice system is pretty broken. I don't think the Post Office debacle features, but at the end of the Secret Barrister(1), a hypothetical example is given where the many critical systemic failings described in the book align to get an innocent person found guilty and imprisoned. It's pretty close to what actually happened to the subpostmasters (but for assault rather then fraud). ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Barrister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Barrister. It's very good and all you can say after reading it is "Jesus, I just hope I stay lucky enough to never get involved in the courts". I don't think anything has improved since 2018.
- janice1999 2y ago
  Post Office officials knew it was broken and lied over and over again. They hid a report into Horizon from 2003 and threatened the consultant if he spoke out [1]. The Post Office also knew for a fact their defense was false but continued to lie in court [2]. In England (but not Scotland), the Post Office itself acted as prosecutor separate to the normal justice system. Investigators were incentivized to find people guilty. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750
- darreninthenet 2y ago
  The justice system is regional, spread around the country there probably weren't so many in one place that somebody might question it but then it's also for the court to only consider the evidence in front of it. Only the Post Office (covering it up) knew there were so many and they didn't tell the court and in fact they told all the accused that they were the only one (or just a handful) so none of them knew either... its only after the campaigning and research of Alan Bates (one of wrongly accused subpostmasters, and after this week knighted for what he did in uncovering it so is now Sir Alan Bates) that it all came out, especially after a documentary was made about it suddenly the general public knew as well. Private Eye magazine (a sort of political commentary/satirical news magazine in the UK) had been reporting it for years that there was clearly a problem as it was crippingly obvious that we didn't suddenly have a country full of hundreds and hundreds of fraudulent post office workers, but the average person doesn't read it and the MPs were happy to ignore it and believe Fujitsu over their own postmasters some of whom had been doing the job for decades prior to the mess. The enquiry evidence that's been broadcasted recently from the key players is both fascinating and infuriating on what a mess and a coverup it was.
misswaterfairy 2y ago
> About 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted for fraud and theft and over a hundred sent to prison And at least four purportedly related to these prosecutions committed suicide[1]. Perhaps most alarmingly: prior to 1999, the burden of proof for proving that the Horizon system was working correctly would have fallen to the Post Office (as the prosecutor in these instances) and Fujitsu (as the developer). That rule was changed to presume that the computer system worked correctly unless there was explicit evidence to the contrary[2][3]. A very high barrier for a non-technical person to prove, especially in an extremely complex system. It worries me how many people put unchecked faith into the systems that, now more-or-less, rule our lives whether we like it or not. It worries me even more that a lot of computer programmers, systems engineers, et al, don't understand how their code affects others in bad and unintended ways, and why testing matters so much. Uncle Bob, as divisive as he is, hits this nail on the head with a depleted uranium sledgehammer[4] (19:47-24:33). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/what-is-the-post-office-horizon-it-scandal-all-about https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/what-is-the... [2] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252501510/BCS-demands-reform-to-rules-on-computer-evidence-following-Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-revelations https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252501510/BCS-demands-re... [3] https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/bcs-calls-for-change-in-law-on-computer-evidence/ https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/bcs-calls-for-change-in... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EmboKQH8lM&t=1187s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EmboKQH8lM&t=1187s
- croes 2y ago
  Did they ask programmer if there could be a flaw in the system? I can't think of many programmers who would deny the possibility.
  - gravescale 2y ago
    I imagine Fujitsu did everything they could to put only loyal management on the stand. They did call the Fujitsu chief architect, who is now under investigation for perjury for his efforts (and I also imagine Fujitsu are less going to try to throw him under the bus and more have a tungsten bus dropped on him from orbit)
  - 2y ago

Loughla 2y ago

This says they'll get compensation, so that's good. But somebody needs to go to jail for covering this up. A lot of somebody's probably.

alistairSH 2y ago
Yeah, I really hope some higher-ups at both the national postal service and Fujistu go to jail over this. And how the hell did the post office come to believe 700+ sub-post-masters were committing fraud? It strikes me as patently ridiculous that such a large number of people would be doing similar small-time accounting fraud. Nobody thought "huh, might be the systems?"
- JusticeJuice 2y ago
  A lot of people who aren't software developers have blind faith that software is always correct. Inversely, software developers never trust software to be correct.
  - dpwm 2y ago
    In England and Wales, at least, there’s even a legal principle that information produced by software is correct unless it is proven otherwise. [0] [0] https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/32105/ https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/32105/
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Sure, and once the cases made it to court, I can see jurors taking the software evidence at face value. In this case, somebody should have pumped the brakes well before criminal proceedings. But, it seems like the higher-ups didn't want to look bad, so buried evidence and charged anyways, which should be criminal (no idea if it is, I'm no expert in UK law).
- ziggy_star 2y ago
  Here, may it serve you well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel)
- janice1999 2y ago
  > Nobody thought "huh, might be the systems?" The Post Office knew their system was broken from at least 2003. Their response was to bury the report and threaten the consultant. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974
- seanhunter 2y ago
  Yeah that genuinely boggles my mind about the whole thing. Less than 20 frauds I would say fine. 700+ is as you say patently ridiculous. It just is very obviously wrong and it’s very disheartening that noone in the senior management at the post office or fujitsu pumped the breaks at that point and tried to do a root cause analysis
pas 2y ago
> A lot of somebody's probably. very tangential, very important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65FRxE7uMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65FRxE7uMc
janice1999 2y ago
> This says they'll get compensation, so that's good. It looks like they will get compensation this time, but only after being featured on an ITV TV drama. The first time around the government drip fed compensation and massively reduced figures, including to people who served jail time for crimes that never happened. Many of the victims are old and some were made homeless because of the Post Office. It was just extra cruelty and maliciousness on top of the injustice they had suffered. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61187241 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61187241

tedivm 2y ago

It's worth noting that some of the victims of this died before it came out. To say this ruined lives is an understatement. It's also important to know that the UK government knew about the flaws with the program but covered them up rather than dealing with the issue. It wasn't until a documentary came out about the issue that the public outcry grew large enough to actual prompt a full investigation.

croes 2y ago
Not just, they committed suicide because of that.

FlyingAvatar 2y ago

Serious questions: If there were so many of them, how did the justice system not figure out this was flawed much sooner? How did the legal representation for these subpostmasters fail to be able to prove their innocence?

gravescale 2y ago
The UK justice system is pretty broken. I don't think the Post Office debacle features, but at the end of the Secret Barrister(1), a hypothetical example is given where the many critical systemic failings described in the book align to get an innocent person found guilty and imprisoned. It's pretty close to what actually happened to the subpostmasters (but for assault rather then fraud). ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Barrister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Barrister. It's very good and all you can say after reading it is "Jesus, I just hope I stay lucky enough to never get involved in the courts". I don't think anything has improved since 2018.
janice1999 2y ago
Post Office officials knew it was broken and lied over and over again. They hid a report into Horizon from 2003 and threatened the consultant if he spoke out [1]. The Post Office also knew for a fact their defense was false but continued to lie in court [2]. In England (but not Scotland), the Post Office itself acted as prosecutor separate to the normal justice system. Investigators were incentivized to find people guilty. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750
darreninthenet 2y ago
The justice system is regional, spread around the country there probably weren't so many in one place that somebody might question it but then it's also for the court to only consider the evidence in front of it. Only the Post Office (covering it up) knew there were so many and they didn't tell the court and in fact they told all the accused that they were the only one (or just a handful) so none of them knew either... its only after the campaigning and research of Alan Bates (one of wrongly accused subpostmasters, and after this week knighted for what he did in uncovering it so is now Sir Alan Bates) that it all came out, especially after a documentary was made about it suddenly the general public knew as well. Private Eye magazine (a sort of political commentary/satirical news magazine in the UK) had been reporting it for years that there was clearly a problem as it was crippingly obvious that we didn't suddenly have a country full of hundreds and hundreds of fraudulent post office workers, but the average person doesn't read it and the MPs were happy to ignore it and believe Fujitsu over their own postmasters some of whom had been doing the job for decades prior to the mess. The enquiry evidence that's been broadcasted recently from the key players is both fascinating and infuriating on what a mess and a coverup it was.

misswaterfairy 2y ago

> About 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted for fraud and theft and over a hundred sent to prison And at least four purportedly related to these prosecutions committed suicide[1]. Perhaps most alarmingly: prior to 1999, the burden of proof for proving that the Horizon system was working correctly would have fallen to the Post Office (as the prosecutor in these instances) and Fujitsu (as the developer). That rule was changed to presume that the computer system worked correctly unless there was explicit evidence to the contrary[2][3]. A very high barrier for a non-technical person to prove, especially in an extremely complex system. It worries me how many people put unchecked faith into the systems that, now more-or-less, rule our lives whether we like it or not. It worries me even more that a lot of computer programmers, systems engineers, et al, don't understand how their code affects others in bad and unintended ways, and why testing matters so much. Uncle Bob, as divisive as he is, hits this nail on the head with a depleted uranium sledgehammer[4] (19:47-24:33). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/what-is-the-post-office-horizon-it-scandal-all-about https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/what-is-the... [2] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252501510/BCS-demands-reform-to-rules-on-computer-evidence-following-Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-revelations https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252501510/BCS-demands-re... [3] https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/bcs-calls-for-change-in-law-on-computer-evidence/ https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/bcs-calls-for-change-in... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EmboKQH8lM&t=1187s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EmboKQH8lM&t=1187s

croes 2y ago
Did they ask programmer if there could be a flaw in the system? I can't think of many programmers who would deny the possibility.
- gravescale 2y ago
  I imagine Fujitsu did everything they could to put only loyal management on the stand. They did call the Fujitsu chief architect, who is now under investigation for perjury for his efforts (and I also imagine Fujitsu are less going to try to throw him under the bus and more have a tungsten bus dropped on him from orbit)
- 2y ago