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I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fi
by PaulRobinson 1y ago
I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points.
One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.
The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" by admitting they had made mistakes, so kept digging.
There is also a fundamental flaw in how the courts - and the Post Office prosecutors - were instructed to think about the evidence in common law.
Bizarrely, it was not (and may still not), be an acceptable defense to say that computer records are wrong. They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible, and if your evidence contradicts an IT systems evidence, you were considered a liar by the court, and a jury might be instructed accordingly.
Yes, that's awful. Yes, it's ruined lives.
But also, I think all involved have realised pointing fingers at one or two individuals to blame hasn't really helped fix things. Like an air accident, you have to have several things go wrong and compound errors to get into this amount of trouble, normally. There were systemic failing across procurement, implementation, governance, investigations, prosecutions, within the justice system and beyond.
I already know people who have worked for Fujitsu in the UK are not exactly shouting about it. And yet, they're still getting awarded contracts before the compensation has been paid out...
- akudha 1y agoLets ignore everything else for a second. Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight? We're talking about postal workers for fuck's sake, not a bunch of mafia dudes. Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors to send as many people to jail as possible, guilty or not? run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" Oh well, now their precious brand has been harmed, how exactly do they expect to gain the trust, respect of the people back? Maybe they think the public will forget and move on? These people suck...
- pinoy420 1y ago[dead]
- Akronymus 1y agoafaict, the assumption was they already were, and were just uncovered.
- mxfh 1y agoRelated case in the Netherlands: if you just think all dual citizens are up for no good as the pretext a lot of law abiding people's lifes will just get upended. If legislation, jurisdiction and law enforcement forget about basic principles and human rights in favour of looking productive, collateral damage is pretty much more or less expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand...
- worik 1y agoMeans tested benefits, all sorts of problems There are incentives to cheat There is moral panic about "undeserving poor" Increase taxes and make services and benefits free, including a UBI. Increase and collect taxes.
- nullc 1y ago> Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight The whole privatized postoffice setup was a profoundly unattractive investment-- at least to those who thought of it on investment grounds (e.g. return on investment+costs)-- and so there was a presumption before the computer system went in that many must have been in it to steal. > Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors One of the broken things here is that the postoffice themselves were able to criminally prosecute-- so the criminal cases lacked "have to deserve the state prosecutors time" protection.
- justin66 1y ago> One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed. Which certainly contributed to the suicides.
- arrowsmith 1y ago> if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed. Is this not the case in other countries?
- helloguillecl 1y agoIn Germany, calling someone by a crime they have been sentenced of, constitutes defamation.
- arrowsmith 1y agoWhat? That makes no sense whatsoever.
- akudha 1y agoWhy does it not make sense? If I was involved in a robbery at age 18, as a dumb kid, should I still be called "robber xyz" for the rest of my life? Especially if I turned my life around?
- arrowsmith 1y agoI agree that we should be forgiving, give people second chances etc, but that doesn't change the meaning of words. "Defamation" is when you damage someone's reputation by saying things about them that aren't true. If you were convicted of a crime long ago and someone draws attention to that fact, they're not defaming you. The truth isn't defamation, by definition.
- mkehrt 1y ago> The truth isn't defamation, by definition. This is a famously American position.
- arrowsmith 1y agoI'm not American, and we're discussing a UK news story. But I genuinely didn't know that other countries do things differently. What does defamation even mean if it doesn't include the concept of untruth?
- jen20 1y ago> They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible This will change when elected officials start getting hoisted by their own electronic petards. The Venn diagram of midwit enterprise developers who build systems with audit trails yet could not swear under penalty of perjury that the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case is almost a circle.
- Jooror 1y agoShow me a system for which you believe the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case and I’ll show you a midwit…
- liveoneggs 1y agoI may be dumb but isn't this what a merkle tree does? Or the blockchain sort of does (with 51% confidence?)
- jen20 1y agoIt is straightfoward to build systems which derive their state from the audit trail instead of building the audit trail in parallel. That is what event sourcing is.
- Jooror 1y agoTIL, thanks! I was attempting to emphasize the absurdity of any software system being “absolutely correct at all times”. I don’t believe such a system can exist, at least not in such strong terms.
- jen20 1y agoWhat's important is that the audit trail can be replayed to derive the state of the system - and preferably in such a way that investigators can determine what _would_ have been seen by someone using it on a specific day at a specific time. Whether the system is free from bugs is a different matter - no system is, which is why deriving state from the audit trail instead of a parallel process which is guaranteed to diverge is so important!
- hermitcrab 1y ago>And was being run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" We've seen this time and again. Organizations would rather throw people under the bus than damage the organizations reputation/brand. For example, the Church of England has tried to cover up numerous sexual abuse scandals. This is a recent and particularly nasty case: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cje0y3gqw1po https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cje0y3gqw1po The irony is that the coverups generally don't work for long, and the reputational damage is all the worse for the coverup.