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I haven’t seen any coverage of technical details of how the buggy software might have made fraud look possible. Does anyone have a link about that? A priori it

I haven’t seen any coverage of technical details of how the buggy software might have made fraud look possible. Does anyone have a link about that? A priori it seems a little implausible to me that any software could make such a mistake in a way that didn’t make it obvious it was a bug, but I don’t know the extent to which the Post Office might have mishandled the evidence.

janice1999 2y ago
There were 2 aspects: 1. Fujitsu employees could remotely log in to accounts and alter them without subpostmasters knowing. The Post Office knew this could cause shortfalls but lied about it in court. [1] 2. Money/transactions frequently went 'missing' according to subpostmasters when actions, such as customers lodging or withdrawing money or buying stamps, were not properly replicated to the central database. This was caused by things as trivial as 2 customers using 2 machines at the same time. These complaints started as soon as the system was deployed but was ignored for nearly 2 decades. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750
- pxeger1 2y ago
  Ah, 2 seems like a sensible explanation. I’ve seen 1 mentioned in the press but never seen any details on whether Fujitsu employees ever did this, and why they might have.
  - janice1999 2y ago
    > why they might have. They had untracked access to what are essentially bank accounts. No one has said it out loud but the implication is theft. The other possibility is that they were desperately trying to cover up faults - when subpostmasters reported bugged transactions sometimes it would get silently 'fixed' remotely.
gnfargbl 2y ago
There's a very long technical expert report describing Horizon on the Inquiry website: https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/expg0000001-expert-report-charles-cipione https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/expg000... I have to confess to not having read it, but it's the closest thing I've seen to having the detail we'd all like to understand.

janice1999 2y ago

There were 2 aspects: 1. Fujitsu employees could remotely log in to accounts and alter them without subpostmasters knowing. The Post Office knew this could cause shortfalls but lied about it in court. [1] 2. Money/transactions frequently went 'missing' according to subpostmasters when actions, such as customers lodging or withdrawing money or buying stamps, were not properly replicated to the central database. This was caused by things as trivial as 2 customers using 2 machines at the same time. These complaints started as soon as the system was deployed but was ignored for nearly 2 decades. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68663750

pxeger1 2y ago
Ah, 2 seems like a sensible explanation. I’ve seen 1 mentioned in the press but never seen any details on whether Fujitsu employees ever did this, and why they might have.
- janice1999 2y ago
  > why they might have. They had untracked access to what are essentially bank accounts. No one has said it out loud but the implication is theft. The other possibility is that they were desperately trying to cover up faults - when subpostmasters reported bugged transactions sometimes it would get silently 'fixed' remotely.

gnfargbl 2y ago

There's a very long technical expert report describing Horizon on the Inquiry website: https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/expg0000001-expert-report-charles-cipione https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/expg000... I have to confess to not having read it, but it's the closest thing I've seen to having the detail we'd all like to understand.