UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
1–10 of 291 posts
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#2Such a terrible story. I'm surprised it hasn't been more prominent within the tech community. Many dozens of lives were ruined.
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#3Such a terrible story. I'm surprised it hasn't been more prominent within the tech community. Many dozens of lives were ruined.
I just came from another thread (here) where the subject was Google arbitrarily ruining businesses and lives based on algorithmic fraud detection gone wrong. I'd estimate the issue is alive with U.S. techies at the very least.
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#4An (IMO) Interesting question is how to reduce the risks of things like this happening.
Where evidence from IT systems is being used as a large part of a prosecution, it seems that it should have some kind of scrutiny as to how those systems operate.
One option would be allowing the defence to see details of how the system works, testing that was done and known bugs, but that would require a lot of expensive work by legal defence teams, especially where the system is complex.
Another option would be some kind of certification of IT system operation, but again it would be hard/expensive to do and very incompatible with rapid development techniques.
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#5Outrageous that so many people's lives were blown up by this. Relieved to hear the court ordered in their favour.
I wonder if the post masters can now go after the Post Office for damages?
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#6The company I work for ships hundreds of packages through RM. The RM tech I've seen is a mess. Makes me wonder what it's like behind the scenes. Just one lowlight I've come across, this comment can be found in the HTML for one of their portals:
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#7The company I work for ships hundreds of packages through RM. The RM tech I've seen is a mess. Makes me wonder what it's like behind the scenes. Just one lowlight I've come across, this comment can be found in the HTML for one of their portals:
One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards. Royal Mail is the network and carrier, while the Post Office is the primary entry point into that network (they also offer access to a bunch of other services not related to the Royal Mail). Doesn't make your point any less valid, but wanted to call out the distinction.
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#8The company I work for ships hundreds of packages through RM. The RM tech I've seen is a mess. Makes me wonder what it's like behind the scenes. Just one lowlight I've come across, this comment can be found in the HTML for one of their portals:
One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards. Royal Mail is the network and carrier, while the Post Office is the primary entry point into that network (they also offer access to a bunch of other services not related to the Royal Mail). Doesn't make your point any less valid, but wanted to call out the distinction.
As a sub-nitpick, I would definitely say Royal Mail itself is certainly the primary entry point into the network too. But Post Office is super helpful in providing supporting services for many government-related things like passport photos, certification, applying for things etc
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#9An (IMO) Interesting question is how to reduce the risks of things like this happening. Where evidence from IT systems is being used as a large part of a prosecution, it seems that it should have some kind of scrutiny as to how those systems operate. One option would be allowing the defence to see details of how the system works, testing that was done and known bugs, but that would require a lot of expensive work by…
I'm very sure this system was certified in a multitude of ways. No certification process would prevent this.
The real issue here was that Post Office refused to recognise that, although computers themselves are mostly infallible, computer programs are never infallible. They conducted their activities and took actions based on assuming the reporting was flawless.
Then the really serious problem is that in cases where the fallibility became more visible, they consistently and systematically covered it up and pressed forward with their incredibly aggressive enforcement work anyway, knowing how much damage it was doing.
This is unquestionably an issue of abuse of power and position.
Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
#10The company I work for ships hundreds of packages through RM. The RM tech I've seen is a mess. Makes me wonder what it's like behind the scenes. Just one lowlight I've come across, this comment can be found in the HTML for one of their portals:
One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards. Royal Mail is the network and carrier, while the Post Office is the primary entry point into that network (they also offer access to a bunch of other services not related to the Royal Mail). Doesn't make your point any less valid, but wanted to call out the distinction.
Sounds like the kind of bullshit BT and OpenReach pull too. Claim to be two unrelated companies and yet one owns parts of the other and the same boards run both - all so they can pass customer problems between the two I definitely.