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UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

theguardian.com

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Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#171

Post by coldcode »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #121
PaulKeeble wrote: post #35

Software is in the walls. At some point legislators are going to come and ask the question how we stop things like this happening and if the Fujitsu's of the world don't have an answer then we can expect regulation that will likely embed practices that don't help. I don't think we take software reliability seriously enough, most of our focus is on speed of release, ever quicker cycles and it being OK to break things.…

> I don't think we take software reliability seriously enough, most of our focus is on speed of release, ever quicker cycles and it being OK to break things. This drives me up the walls. At my last job (food ordering startup the CEO had the attitude that releasing code that was 95% functional was Okay, remaining issues could be fixed as we went along. As a result, one developer overlooked a bug that cost the company…

I worked at a place that internal customers complained QA took too long, so IT said fine, we won't do any. Then they complained the software didn't work... people sure can be stupid.

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#172

Post by jonplackett »

davidhyde wrote: post #98

Those postmasters defending charges of theft against them in the 2000s should not have had to prove that the computer system they were forced to use had bugs. In order to prosecute them in the first place, the Post Office should have had to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt and without risk of bias, that the computer system was correct. So, independent review at the very least, not testimony from parties with a veste…

These people need to be paid massive compensation for having their lives ruined, paid for by whoever did such a bad job on this system.

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#173

Post by detaro »

coldcode wrote: post #171
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think we take software reliability seriously enough, most of our focus is on speed of release, ever quicker cycles and it being OK to break things. This drives me up the walls. At my last job (food ordering startup the CEO had the attitude that releasing code that was 95% functional was Okay, remaining issues could be fixed as we went along. As a result, one developer overlooked a bug that cost the company…

I worked at a place that internal customers complained QA took too long, so IT said fine, we won't do any. Then they complained the software didn't work... people sure can be stupid.

Indeed, getting rid of QA instead of improving it just because people think it's slow is indeed kind of stupid.

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#174

Post by arethuza »

jonplackett wrote: post #172
davidhyde wrote: post #98

Those postmasters defending charges of theft against them in the 2000s should not have had to prove that the computer system they were forced to use had bugs. In order to prosecute them in the first place, the Post Office should have had to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt and without risk of bias, that the computer system was correct. So, independent review at the very least, not testimony from parties with a veste…

These people need to be paid massive compensation for having their lives ruined, paid for by whoever did such a bad job on this system.

It's far worse than just having bugs - they knew there were bugs and covered it up even when they knew what impact it was having. That's the bit I find genuinely shocking.

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#175

Post by himinlomax »

jschwartzi wrote: post #153
LatteLazy wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree more broadly, you cannot expect the Post Office to prove a negative. How would they prove conclusively that the software had no bugs at all under any circumstances? That's a pretty steep QA bill imho.

They can actually use formal methods to prove that their software is bug free. This technique is often used in safety-critical systems to ensure that they function as-specified. As long as the specification is correct, the software system should perform to specification under all input conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_methods We should consider the cost of QA and of engineering process against the cos…

Formal methods require a comprehensive specification. Usually, if you have a specification comprehensive enough for formal verification, you already have 90% of the benefits, which is why it's (so far) only really useful in safety critical applications with a very small scope. I'm not going to take a huge risk in betting that the postal service didn't have anything resembling a serious spec in this case.

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#176

Post by martingoodson »

I'm sure it's a coincidence that Fujitsu was also heavily involved in the NHS IT fiasco which cost the NHS £10B. 'the biggest IT failure ever seen'. The Fujitsu UK chairman is also a large Conservative party donor of course - also a complete coincidence. https://www.vice.com/en/article/59x7wz/fujitsu-uk-sues-depar...

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#177

Post by Roonerelli »

dignick wrote: post #138
davidhyde wrote: post #98

Those postmasters defending charges of theft against them in the 2000s should not have had to prove that the computer system they were forced to use had bugs. In order to prosecute them in the first place, the Post Office should have had to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt and without risk of bias, that the computer system was correct. So, independent review at the very least, not testimony from parties with a veste…

As the post office is such an old organisation (350 years), it used to have its own armed guard, has its own investigations branch and conducts its own prosecutions. The police wouldn't get involved because the post office was considered to have jurisdiction. Taken from this, which is a great listen: https://soundcloud.com/privateeyenews/page-94-the-private-ey...

Really great work by Private Eye. They did all the investigation and broke the story. None of the big news outlets were on it at all

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#178

Post by ganzuul »

davidhyde wrote: post #169
LatteLazy wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree more broadly, you cannot expect the Post Office to prove a negative. How would they prove conclusively that the software had no bugs at all under any circumstances? That's a pretty steep QA bill imho.

Agreed that you cannot expect the Post Office to prove a negative but, if they cannot prove a negative, they should not be able to use their computer system as evidence of theft and fraud. Especially if this is the only evidence they have.

So government software, technically cybernetic software, should be proven to be correct. Will automatic theorem proovers be able to accommodate this?

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#179

Post by ww520 »

lbriner wrote: post #118
haunter wrote: post #43

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252496560/Fujitsu-bosses... >For the first 10 years of Horizon’s existence, transaction and account data was stored on terminals in each branch before being uploaded to a central database via ISDN. Our source says this part of the system simply did not work. >“The cash account was a piece of software that sat on the counter NT box, asleep all day,” he said. “At the end of the day,…

I think a lot of "normal" people like the idea of holding corporates accountable but how would that actually work? The CEO blames one of their directors; the Director blames the supplier; the supplier blames the requirements documentation; the Business Analysts blame the culture for creating confusing and conflicting requirements. Yes, you can hold the organisation accountable but then the people who worked there bac…

CEO and senior executives are paid to take responsibility of the actions of their subordinates, otherwise why would they get the big bucks?

Re: UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’

#180

Post by g_p »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #30
baybal2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you make this mistake almost 1000 times over 14 years before someone suspects the system data may not be quite right? It's very much a case of assumed infallibility of "scientific evidence," which in this case were computer records. It's also very much a case of UK judges greatly, greatly disregarding the process, which fully reneges on their oath. Country's legal system can't function if you have judges who…

> It's very much a case of assumed infallibility of "scientific evidence," which in this case were computer records. I wonder if any of the prosecuted were in Scotland? In Scots Law there's a fundamental rule of Corroboration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corroboration_in_Scots_law There must be two source of independent evidence for someone to be convicted of a crime. I'll be interested to see (if there's genuinely…

Given this appeal took place in England (and not in the Supreme Court), it was all English verdicts which were overturned as I understand.

The requirement for corroboration in such a situation would probably be met by having someone "speak to" the digital evidence and audit trail.

For example, if you have CCTV evidence, the CCTV is one piece of evidence, and it would be corroborated by a witness statement of the victim identifying them from the CCTV.

Corroboration is an important and useful safeguard, but I don't think it would necessarily have outright prevented this. Perhaps it would - maybe it would have raised the bar on scrutiny of the evidence, by there being a general higher expectation?

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