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Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

arstechnica.com

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Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#41

Post by liveoneggs »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

Bugs are inevitable. The real issue is with the post office management that prosecuted people they knew there was a good chance were innocent, withheld evidence, falsified evidence, and harassed journalists investigating. What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells > witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to…

The CEO Priest is a head scratcher all by itself

> I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#42

Post by ldoughty »

orbisvicis wrote: post #33

"I [Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu's European division] am surprised that that detail was not included in the witness statements given by Fujitsu staff to the Post Office and I have seen some evidence of editing witness statements by others" How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? At this point I'm starting to suspect some u…

I found that interesting as well. It shifts the blame away from software and a cover up by Fujitsu to more of a perception/reputation/political cover up by the Post Office.

Fujitsu still has some blame, but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that? If I gave a written statement to a police officer, is it my responsibility to follow up and make sure they didn't edit my statement? Of course... if I found out, it is my responsibility to raise a flag, but I should be able to trust agents of the courts to not alter evidence.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#43

Post by jzb »

WalterBright wrote: post #35
dylan604 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'd posit that you're jumping to a conclusion. we've never actually tried prosecuting/convicting/incarcerating CEOs or other high level officials, so we don't know what the deterrent on that would actually be. we need to run the experiments through to the end to see.

Ken Lay of Enron.

The exception that proves the rule. It would have been more accurate for OP to have said we haven't tried prosecuting and imprisoning CEOs, etc, with the same vigor we apply to street crime.

Every great once in a while, yes, we actually prosecute the hell out of a few executives. But it's hardly commonplace.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#44

Post by matheusmoreira »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

Bugs are inevitable. The real issue is with the post office management that prosecuted people they knew there was a good chance were innocent, withheld evidence, falsified evidence, and harassed journalists investigating. What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells > witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to…

Absolutely. Another example: people are routinely sent to jail based on highly sensitive field drug tests which have significant rates of false positives.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#45

Post by CoastalCoder »

arp242 wrote: post #13
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

Bugs are inevitable. The real issue is with the post office management that prosecuted people they knew there was a good chance were innocent, withheld evidence, falsified evidence, and harassed journalists investigating. What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells > witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to…

I have generally found that there's not that much relation between people's stated beliefs and their actual every-day behaviour. By and large, I do think their beliefs are genuine and heart-felt, and that they're not faking them. It's just that it doesn't really influence their daily behaviour all that much. Generally people are motivated by the incentives of the moment, emotion of the moment, and that kind of thing.…

> People often assume that if someone has the "right set of beliefs" (whatever that "right set" is) that they're also a good person.

IIUC, there are a few aspects of Christian theology that muddy this issue a bit. I'm probably a bit wrong, so I'd be grateful for any corrections:

1) Christians believe in progressive sanctification. I.e., the Holy Spirit works, over time, to make Christians more like Jesus. So you really should expect true Christians, on average, to gradually become better people.

2) Not everyone professing to be a Christian truly is [0].

As an agnostic, those issues have frustrated my efforts to decide if Christianity generally true.

[0] https://www.openbible.info/topics/fake_christians

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#46

Post by xbar »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9
msie wrote: post #3

All the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail. All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and malpractice.

Odd that so often here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... yet whenever some CEO or high level official is caught in malfeasance, we insist that "sending them to jail" is the only proper response.

Societies expect that people who violate laws to endure some amount of reciprocal suckage to balance the suckage they inflicted in their violations. That is called justice.

Prisons, generally, suck.

Are prisons good schools or preventers of recidivism? Some say yes, some say no. But most agree that they suck.

I cannot speak for the remainder of HN but my read is that prisons are effective at delivering suckage--sometimes more or less than intended, which you can call a miscarriage of justice.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#48

Post by senderista »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #31
SoftTalker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd that so often here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... yet whenever some CEO or high level official is caught in malfeasance, we insist that "sending them to jail" is the only proper response.

Why is it that the same people who call for capital punishment, suddenly loose all their steam if you agree with them and say Boeing executives should be first in line for killing 300 people?

Kinda like the people who think the Capitol police should have just shot all the rioters.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#49

Post by acdha »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9
msie wrote: post #3

All the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail. All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and malpractice.

Odd that so often here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... yet whenever some CEO or high level official is caught in malfeasance, we insist that "sending them to jail" is the only proper response.

It’s more nuanced than that, in part because there are two separate issues:

Not all crimes are the same: harsh punishment won’t deter crimes where people think they won’t get caught (e.g. speeding) or where they are not thinking rationally (e.g. drunken fights). In this case, these are lengthily premeditated decisions so deterrence is likely to be effective _if_ they aren’t confident about being able to evade consequences. That’s why it’s so important to have them now because every other white collar criminal is watching and learning.

The other factor is what form the consequences come in. Fines are problematic if they can be treated as a cost of doing business, but even the richest people only have 24 hours in a day. I personally think community service would be better than jail: if nothing else, it’s cheaper and I think these guys would be incredibly motivated to avoid spending their time scraping gum off of park benches.

Re: Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from the start"

#50

Post by pasabagi »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9
msie wrote: post #3

All the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail. All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and malpractice.

Odd that so often here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... yet whenever some CEO or high level official is caught in malfeasance, we insist that "sending them to jail" is the only proper response.

I guess there are two aspects to prison: the first is as you said, a deterent, an agent of rehabilitation, a place of punishment, etc - the ideal form. Questionable, but ultimately something a lot of people could agree to. Then, there is really-existing-prison, which is a place of misery for the people who, almost entirely due to structural reasons, get railroaded repeatedly into its embrace.

So even prison abolitionists are often rather sanguine about imprisoning people like CEOs and high level officials who, despite being absolutely manifestly not railroaded, who have the structure covering from them at every turn, and end up both committing and being convicted as criminals.

I don't think this is necessarily contradictory: you can be fine with the idea of some kind of prison while also recognizing that the current system is a rather pointless and dysfunctional form of sadism that has no relation to any practical or ethical goal.

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