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Woman stranded in Spain after UK's eVisa system mistakes her for twin sister
- feintruled 2mo agoI have identical twin boys - when signing up for a bank account app and while completing all the associated hoops for ID, the second to do it got the rather dystopian error message 'an account has already been registered with this face'
- glimshe 2mo agoI wonder how it's possible they didn't think about this problem. Considering everyone involved in building this feature, not a single person thought about the possibility of twins or simply people who are very alike? Also, can't people open multiple accounts?
- crooked-v 2mo agoIt's one of those items way down on the list of "Falsehoods programmers believe...", way below everything on the names list (https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...).
- _joel 2mo agoBecause it probably does the dystopian tracking well enough, they don't care if it's not 100% accurate. Edge cases in the new world have no recourse, citizen.
- II2II 2mo agoJust look at the "falsehoods programmers believe about ..." articles that pop up from time to time. There are plenty of complexities in the real world that people either don't know about, aren't front of mind when they are tackling a larger problem, or simply don't want to deal with in the here and now. Lost knowledge and new problems are part of the reason why programmers are discouraged from rewriting software from scratch and why businesses in general are hesitant to replace legacy systems that still work.
- globular-toast 2mo agoThat's true, but those lists are interesting because they aren't full of things you should be learning in primary school.
- II2II 2mo agoTrue, but many of those bits would be learned in some primary schools. It simply depends upon whether they are relevant where you live. That's especially true for names, which is culturally dependent. It is also true for the culturally dependent aspects of dates/time, though there are obscure bits that are only relevant to certain disciplines.
- nkrisc 2mo agoWhich is pretty absurd because twins aren’t even that uncommon. I would bet most people on the planet know or are related to twins.
- hamper653 2mo agoEvery person on the planet is related to twins.
- nkrisc 2mo agoWhat a pointless point to make. I’ll spell it out for you: related within a generation or two. There are no twins in my family that I know of for several generations, for example. Thus I would say I’m not related to any twins because I’m not in any meaningful way, even if there might be twins somewhere in my ancestral history. If you mean that all humans are related, that is true but a completely useless fact in this context.
- another-dave 2mo agoI imagine that it probably went like this "what about identical twins?" / "Don't worry about that for now, we'll solve for it before we go live, but it's not in this milestone". Then someone pulls rank and decides the product is "good enough, we can't wait for all bugs to be fixed" and gets it deployed.
- mr_toad 2mo agoIssues get closed to make the metrics look good, not because they’re actually fixed.
- dgellow 2mo agoBased on my experience I assume someone mentioned the risk, others said it’s unlikely and only a small percentage, that we should care about the 99% for now. Then the issues isn’t revisited until someone impacted complains enough. p99 is ok for web stuff, not for systems that impacts people in their life, but I’ve seen too often things being dismissed because they are edge cases (which becomes an actual real issue at the scale of a country of course)
- wat10000 2mo agoMaybe they didn’t care. Identical twins are a fraction of a percent of the population. Excluding them (really, only half of them) from the customer base wouldn’t hurt noticeably.
- cm2187 2mo agoWhat is strange is that even the best face recognition algorithms have false positive. So surely they must have planned for two unrelated customers resolving to the same embeddings.
- ginko 2mo agoAnyone have any idea how this can happen? Surely the boys have different first names, so how can the system mix them up?
- contubernio 2mo agoOne imagines they are far more worried about person X fraudulently claiming to be person Y than they are about occasionally causing problems for identical twins. Obviously the solution is to accompany facial recognition with DNA tests.
- netsharc 2mo agoOne kid needs a goatie: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fartworks.thetvdb.com%2Fbanners%2Fseries%2F73871%2Fepisodes%2F603a4e58da602.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9cef7f481d83057b58dd396b5c6be279bd8a72442679fc0b1d7f007327de53f3 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- a022311 2mo agoThe article doesn't give much more information than the title. Almost zero details.
- hnjbx769kd 2mo ago[dead]
- zabil 2mo agoI've had issues with this e-visa implementation and was told I could not board flights. As a someone in tech, I feel this a classic case study of how NOT to roll out a release and develop a solution. The release was chaotic, none of the airlines staff were trained on how to use this. So they still insisted on the expired cards and then picked on the expiry dates. Next, almost everyone makes you generate a verification share code in front of them by logging into the e-visa website even if the rules say I can print it out and just use the code. It takes a few minute to get on the website and generate one. This solution assumed that everyone has access to a smart phone and a good wifi connection to make this work. Whoever built this didn't test it on the ground.
- alphabeta3r56 2mo agoHow did they roll it out embassy without having at least some old systemd or a human in the loop backup working?
- CoastalCoder 2mo ago> ... without having at least some old systemd ... Back in my day, visas were handled by init scripts. And we like it that way!
- JSR_FDED 2mo agoBut with systemd you can start deportation procedures while waiting for the rest to resolve.
- RedShift1 2mo ago> Whoever built this didn't test it on the ground. God this happens all the time. Software written by people that don't use the software themselves. It has happened to me so many times, I come across a piece of software with weird bugs or interactions that would be immediately fixed if the developer just spends 5 minutes using the software like an end user would. Dogfood all the things!
- 2mo ago
- crooked-v 2mo agoI suspect this case has origins less to do with the programming itself, and more to do with UK bureaucracy just not giving a shit, as with the post office scandal where authorities, including the legal system, blindly believing in the outsourced systems led to hundreds of false prosecutions and thirteen suicides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal).
- rwmj 2mo agoThe Home Office does manage to be both cruel and incompetent, which is the worst possible combination.
- robertlagrant 2mo agoIt's the second worst.
- fergie 2mo ago[dead]
- gib444 2mo ago[flagged]
- varispeed 2mo agoIt's more to do with Civil Service's hatred of working class.
- sam_lowry_ 2mo agooups.
- Havoc 2mo agoThe story is about the British system not the EU one
- chainier 2mo agoIt'd be lovely if articles like this named the people responsible for actually building the systems. It's almost certainly never a government department. They'll have paid one the many software/technology companies to build this thing. Who will be hiding their shoddy crap behind their client (the government department that paid for it). There are some patterns that I'm sure would start to arise from naming the consultancies that are churning out crap.
- dofm 2mo agoActually this was developed by the government, in a meaningful sense, but it seems like it's Entrust (more or less inevitably) and Accenture who are the outsourced parts. So basically both US multinationals (Accenture have a Dublin HQ as a fig leaf)
- tagyro 2mo agoAccenture …that tracks
- Steve16384 2mo agoWould it make any difference? Fujitsu wrote software so buggy that innocent people got fined and put in prison. They still get contracts even today.
- jjk166 2mo agoAll software is going to have edge cases, no matter how good the contractor is. The decision to not have contingencies to manually handle reasonable edge cases is entirely on the government.
- Havoc 2mo agoOne of the reasons I’m applying for a British passport. Existing purely in some mystery database like that seems risky long term
- poizan42 2mo ago> A Home Office spokesperson said: “Over 10 million people have already successfully used eVisas to prove their immigration status. ..." So how many people did not successfully use it? Could be 100 million for all we know. Do they think just throwing out a large number without anything to compare it to is somehow proving something?
- walthamstow 2mo ago> Do they think just throwing out a large number without anything to compare it to is somehow proving something? Welcome to the last 20 years of UK public policy communications. Politicians know that people do not question big numbers or have the skills to put them in context. I remember the May government shouting that "more children go to schools rated good+ by Ofsted than ever before". Me and you would say, well, there's more children alive than ever before, so it's hardly an achievement.
- dofm 2mo agoIt only launched in the middle of April (edit: middle of February was the switchover at the border where no other fallback would have been possible) It sounds to me like this number indicates broad success. The rough estimate seems to be that only about two per cent of border crossings use an eVisa anyway (British passport holders don't and non-immigrating visitors don't). Even over summer that would probably only mean maybe 2.5 million border crossings, so the other uses are not at the border — they will instead be employment/landlord/benefit/healthcare checks using the online systems. So for example, renting a new property, starting a new job, applying for a new benefit, or needing non-emergency healthcare etc.
- poizan42 2mo agoHow? How can a single absolute number indicate broad success? You can't read from it if failure rate is 1% (completely unacceptable) or 0.01% (probably acceptable as long as problems are quickly mitigated). Also what do they even count as a success? If someone is stranded somewhere for a month and the problem then gets mitigated, they did eventually successfully use it, didn't they? The strongest indicator that the system is riddled with issues is in what they did not say. If they had less than 100 cases where the system initially failed and the issues got resolved within a few hours I'd bet they would brag about it.
- varispeed 2mo agoShe could have used a boat. Comes with a free hotel stay and no documents needed. Jokes aside, when helping someone I know return to the UK, I wasn't sure if I have a stroke or someone who wrote the guidance had a lobotomy. Clear as mud.
- slaw 2mo ago[flagged]
- masfuerte 2mo agoTo be fair, the rules are insane. There are several different ways in which you might be or become a British citizen, and there are five other kinds of British (non-citizen) nationality. Irish citizens are in a category of their own. And then there's rules for other EU citizens and per-country rules for everyone else.
- Freak_NL 2mo agoThis is not a software issue (not directly). Sure, the software has a bug. Software does. Almost always. What is broken here is that it is possible to get stuck in an airport with no possibility of escalating sensibly to a chain of human beings with agency to resolve it. You could have a software process which works 99.9% of the time, and have staff at hand which could solve any solvable remaining issues like this one. They call the Home Office internal hotline, explain the issue, resolve it by manually interfering on the spot (and have a bug filed), and everyone carries on. Instead, we demand a 100% correct system, and save money on actually having people around who can deal with the edge cases and make sure everyone has a good time. Of course, getting a project from 99.9% to 100% costs a lot of money, because that includes literally all edge cases ever (getting to 100% is as likely as reaching ∞ by multiplying any given starting number by 2 until you reach it), and so it will likely end up being more expensive in budget overruns than the 99.9% plus humans system. Obviously, politicians must choose for the fictional 100% case, because they can't afford the cheaper 99.9% plus human one.
- MarceliusK 2mo agoI mostly agree but I think the bar for the software still has to be unusually high when the failure mode is "you are not allowed to enter the country you legally live in"... The human fallback is essential, but it shouldn't become the thing that makes a fundamentally unreliable system acceptable
- martinald 2mo agoTbh, I suspect this failure mode is far less than the old mode - which is paper based and your passport goes missing in transit at the embassy (or doesn't come back in time).
- account42 2mo agoYeah the article makes it unclear but this doesn't sound like she was "stranded" for long: > “I had no idea the issue had been corrected until I was allowed to board my flight home,” Webb said. “Had I not spent hours on the phone trying to resolve the matter, I have no idea how long I could have remained stranded abroad.” Sounds like there were indeed channels to escalate this.
- MarceliusK 2mo ago"Known issue" and "you may not board the flight home" really shouldn't appear in the same system. If a database error can effectively invalidate your legal status at the border, there needs to be a fallback that doesn't involve spending hours on the phone
- a012 2mo agoCue The IT crowd: Made in UK. Ah, it makes sense
- sega_sai 2mo agoUnfortunately there are more and more cases where "The computer says no" and then there is no human to talk to, and you are bounced back from one automated system to another... I had recently a case where my title (Mr) ended up as my middle name in the system of the operating airline (it was perfectly correct in the system of the airline that I booked the ticket through). Two hours of talking to those two airlines did not help me. I had to buy another ticket... I think this starts to remind me the movie Brazil...
- rkuska 2mo agoMy favorite part of the UK’s eVisa was taking a portrait photo of my 1.5y old. I was losing my sanity over all the refusals (app refusing the photos).
- disgruntledphd2 2mo ago> My favorite part of the UK’s eVisa was taking a portrait photo of my 1.5y old. I have had to take photos of each of my two kids at six months old for passports. That was not a lot of fun (though it's nice to look at the baby photo for the older one now).
- iso1631 2mo agoI had professional photographers (guy at timpsons) do it with when my kids were that age. Was a doddle and cost about £5 The hilarity of having to compare a baby picture with a 5 year old kid stood in front of you is a separate problem.
- disgruntledphd2 2mo agoYeah, our first was during Covid so we had to do it, and then I just did child number two. > The hilarity of having to compare a baby picture with a 5 year old kid stood in front of you is a separate problem. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous, I'd imagine that most border guards will just check the last name and assume it's OK in that case.
- benhurmarcel 2mo agoI just did an ID picture for a 1 month old. I just did it flat on a bed and used a Nano Banana model to clean it up to match requirements.
- vunderba 2mo agoMost governments have strict rules around “photoshopping” or doctoring images, particularly for passports and other identification documents. I'm pretty sure Gemini embeds invisible SynthID watermarks into Nano-Banana images. So just be advised that this could get you into hot water.
- jonathanlydall 2mo agoThe terrible part to me is them saying "the majority of cases are resolved within 24 hours", this should be like a 15-minute delay at most when you can present your passport with its number which also matches your biometrics (as would be the case with twins). I myself recently had a 10-minute or so delay due to a visa issue. I was departing from Johannesburg and was going to use my Italian passport for entry into New Zealand. I had acquired an NZeTA visa about 15 months before but didn't think to consider until checking in that it was against my previous passport number which I had since renewed. When the agent said they were just having to double check my visa (while my wife's and children' were fine), the fact the passport had been renewed occurred to me and I told the agent about it which probably saved a couple of minutes of them having to work out this was the issue. They phoned New Zealand, explained the situation and within about 10 minutes the New Zealand side updated their system and I was able to complete my check-in.
- rwmj 2mo agoThe problem is there used to be a separate physical card (BRP), but the Home Office got rid of it and moved to this all digital system. In other words there is no backup method available to ground staff.
- Integer 2mo agoThis sounds like a confused support agent. The system lacks a notion of twins - it doesn't link accounts via biometrics. The names are similar but not equal and the passport numbers would also be different, so how would their accounts be linked? Perhaps they used the same email when registering by mistake?
- Razengan 2mo agoHow did we let something as basic as money and travel become so controlled? Laws against persona; freedoms should be called out as unethical.
- xnx 2mo agoNot sure if related, but the Spanish security kiosks are shockingly bad they had great difficulty reading faces, fingerprints, and even passports when held perfectly flat on their reading glass.
- leephillips 2mo ago“Webb said Home Office staff promised her over the phone the problem would be fixed, though a confirmation email was then sent to her sister instead of to her.” Comedy gold.
- vermooten 2mo agoEdge case that needs fixing. Move on.
- mdp2021 2mo agoNo, it's a basic exception like lap years.
- ninalanyon 2mo agoThe UK seems to be uniquely incompetent when it comes to these sorts of organizational tasks.
- aftbit 2mo agoI've seen more and more instances of this. Sometimes it's a feature in disguise - humans are easier to spoof than software - but mostly it's laziness or cost cutting. For example, I went to the bank down the road and tried to withdraw a few thousand dollars. This isn't atypical for me - I do this every few months. I had my ID and knew my account number, but I didn't have my debit card. They essentially told me "system says no" and that there wasn't anything they could do. This is a feature for the bank - a human teller might be talked into pressing the wrong button by fraud. Instead, I had to go home and get my debit card. By presenting that bit of plastic, system said yes, and I was good to go with my cash. For another example, I was recently at an airport listening to a family struggling to get on a flight. They were checked in with seats assigned (confirmed by the gate agent) but the system refused to give the green "ok to board" light for them. Rather than just put them on the flight and file a ticket to fix the record after the fact, the agent just stood there churning for a while until a supervisor was able to sprint over from the other end of the airport. The supervisor didn't use their superior access level to override the broken system. Instead, they used their superior knowledge on how to push the system through its bug. They kicked the family off the flight, unassigned their seats, put them on standby, approved them for (random) empty seats, and then let them board... but now they weren't sitting together in the seats they had before. I ended up missing that (extremely delayed) flight for boring reasons related to ongoing engine problems and upcoming connections so I don't know how it worked out but I hope they got to sit together in the end!
- ChoGGi 2mo ago“In the rare cases where errors are identified, the majority of cases are resolved within 24 hours.” On whose dime? "We regularly see people not only denied boarding, but also compensation," Oh.
- insane_dreamer 2mo agosimilar problem happened to my brother last month when flying out from the US to the UK: the app and website had a bug that was truncating the first letter of his middle name and so it wouldn't match the name on his ID and refused to issue an ETA. no recourse, just trying again and again. missed his flight to the UK as a result, major problem. not having a paper fallback (fill out an immigration form on arrival if you don't need a visa, i.e., US citizens) was the stupidest decision ever