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British Post Office Scandal

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Re: British Post Office Scandal

#21

Post by gumballindie »

sigwinch28 wrote: post #12

It’s another example of the British establishment and media blaming “computer glitches” and “the system”. A buggy accounting system on its own cannot cause such a disaster, unlike a buggy avionics system or a Therac-25. This scandal would not have happened if the people in power had rightly been skeptical of the output of an accounting system that had been called into disrepute by several employees. People did this.…

It’s the same logic people use for claiming ai “will destroy us”. They deflect responsibility for making crapware. Having said that, there is not a single software company I worked at in the UK that has not suffered from serious glitches that no one wanted to fix. One I heard of and it may have been reported in the media was a prison software that let people go either sooner or later than they should have - never on time. Engineering is a joke in the UK because good engineers are considered “obsessed” while talkers are pushed in front. All due to the same mediocre leadership that blames the very same software they dont allocate proper engineering time to fix.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#22

Post by mattbee »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #3

Is there any actual technical report of what's wrong with the Horizon system? This feels like a weirdly long Wikipedia article that only touches on legal points and that somewhat lacks in real substance.

I've also been looking and there has been no information about the nature of the software fault(s) that were the source of the accounting discrepancies that were the trigger for these miscarriages of justice. [edit: yes there are, see above]

But we can't blame this scandal on a software fault, or even an averagely terrible government IT contractor - there were some monsters in the Post Office who chose to take this as far as they did.

(for dang) I'd change this link to the main source on this story since the mid-2000s - https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-i...

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#23

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #5
sdflhasjd wrote: post #3

Is there any actual technical report of what's wrong with the Horizon system? This feels like a weirdly long Wikipedia article that only touches on legal points and that somewhat lacks in real substance.

I felt exactly the same. I read some of the original Second Sight reports and I very much got the impression that the issues were quite broad and related to inadequate training, poor/confusing UI etc. There isn't, as far as I can tell, a single interesting "bug" that was causing incorrect figures to be saved in a database, which is the impression you get from skimming the coverage.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post...

> One, named the “Dalmellington Bug”, after the village in Scotland where a post office operator first fell prey to it, would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed “enter” on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record. In Dalmellington, that bug created a £24,000 discrepancy, which the Post Office tried to hold the post office operator responsible for.

> Another bug, called the Callendar Square bug – again named after the first branch found to have been affected by it – created duplicate transactions due to an error in the database underpinning the system: despite being clear duplicates, the post office operator was again held responsible for the errors.

There isn't a full list of the bugs produced, but it does look like a lot of bugs directly involved incorrect accounting to be recorded.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#24

Post by teamonkey »

hashtag-til wrote: post #7
walthamstow wrote: post #6

Britons - this is your reminder that Private Eye is available for subscription at the very low price of £45 for an issue in your letterbox fortnightly.

Honestly curious: can you expand a bit on why subscribe? I live in the UK, but never heard about Private Eye before?

You’ve certainly seen the cover of Private Eye if you’ve passed the magazine section of any newsagent or supermarket.

I’m not a massive fan of Politics JOE but I enjoyed this interview with Eye editor Ian Hislop, which I think is a good overview of his attitudes and politics https://youtu.be/IbXQWqZ2RvA

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#25

Post by mjburgess »

walthamstow wrote: post #9
hashtag-til wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly curious: can you expand a bit on why subscribe? I live in the UK, but never heard about Private Eye before?

The most obvious and current reason is their tireless work on the Post Office scandal, but in general they print news that newspapers won't for fear of losing their relationships with politicians and other powerful figures. A recent example is the story that an MP walked in on Carrie blowing Boris in his office as Foreign Secretary while he was still married to another woman, and that at the time he was also trying t…

Well it's not gossip, it's against the law. The person 'walking in' on them was at work -- they could easily press charges. It's at least indecent exposure.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#26

Post by HatchedLake721 »

BBC explains why it’s hard to overturn the convictions:

The scale of the Post Office scandal means that there are no easy and quick solutions for the government.

Ministers could advise the King to grant Royal Pardons, once reserved for the condemned as they faced the gallows.

But these would be largely symbolic acts because the government can't, at the stroke of a pen, quash a conviction. That’s because the courts are constitutionally independent - and that means a second option could be difficult too.

Parliament could pass an act declaring that all the Horizon convictions be quashed, but that would be an unprecedented meddling in the work of judges - and it would pave the way for politicians to do it again.

The third option is a mass appeal with a crystal clear submission to Court of Appeal judges that the state no longer believes the convictions should stand. There’s a precedent for this - 39 post office cases were overturned in one go in 2021.

But running such a case would not be easy - and it could still take years to resolve.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#27

Post by kawsper »

walthamstow wrote: post #6

Britons - this is your reminder that Private Eye is available for subscription at the very low price of £45 for an issue in your letterbox fortnightly.

They also have overseas subscriptions, I have been receiving Private Eye here in Denmark for £90 per year (26 issues).

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#28

Post by ChrisKnott »

mjburgess wrote: post #19

In middle of this it's obscene how the media neglects to mention who did most of the actual investigative journalism: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/ -- for years on end, whilst the issue was ignored by the rest of the press. They all now jump in on it and elide the years of work put in by the PE. This is a common tactic in media outlets, esp. here, for the major sources to try to "own" issues with nearly zero work pu…

I think that Computer Weekly were at the forefront of it

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#29

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

mattbee wrote: post #22
sdflhasjd wrote: post #3

Is there any actual technical report of what's wrong with the Horizon system? This feels like a weirdly long Wikipedia article that only touches on legal points and that somewhat lacks in real substance.

I've also been looking and there has been no information about the nature of the software fault(s) that were the source of the accounting discrepancies that were the trigger for these miscarriages of justice. [edit: yes there are, see above] But we can't blame this scandal on a software fault, or even an averagely terrible government IT contractor - there were some monsters in the Post Office who chose to take this a…

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post...

> One, named the “Dalmellington Bug”, after the village in Scotland where a post office operator first fell prey to it, would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed “enter” on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record. In Dalmellington, that bug created a £24,000 discrepancy, which the Post Office tried to hold the post office operator responsible for.

> Another bug, called the Callendar Square bug – again named after the first branch found to have been affected by it – created duplicate transactions due to an error in the database underpinning the system: despite being clear duplicates, the post office operator was again held responsible for the errors.

There isn't a full list of the bugs produced, but it does look like a lot of bugs directly involved incorrect accounting to be recorded.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#30

Post by mjburgess »

To clarify how this happened: in the UK anyone can bring a private prosecution where they effectively act as the prosecutor. This is usually used by charities who take on laws to prosecute (eg., crimes against animals).

Here the post office used the law to prosecute its own staff in alleged crimes against the post office. So they were both the prosecutor and the victim.

This gave them overwhelming incentives not to reveal all evidence to the defence, and indeed they hit many reports on these computer systems.

That is a crime; and I imagine senior staff at the post office should be themselves prosectued.

But the underlying issue is the gap in the law where private prosecution by companies is permitted even when they're the victims and when they hold all the evidence. This is the mechanism which created the insanity.

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