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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"

#91

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

rayiner wrote: post #78
deepsun wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, except for the cases when some group of believers becomes so obsessed and intolerable, that they pack belongings and go do great things like founding Providence or Salt Lake City in the middle of a desert. Those deeds are very respectable IMO.

It’s pretty impressive, right? I don’t think if you took random New Yorkers and dumped them into that same situation they would have achieved the same outcomes.

you don't think other groups would have fought for survival?

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

#93

Post by metabagel »

sfifs wrote: post #67
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.

It appears many western sociologists and have gotten confused over the last half a century or so and have started building theories like castles in the air from dogma instead of rooting them in empiricism, not much different from religious theoreticians of a bygone era who insisted earth is the center of the universe. The only reason for prisons and criminal justice of various to exist throughout history has been to…

> However trying to add additional tasks to the system, like rehabilitation or empowerment or economic development of a disadvantaged class serves only to compromise the core function and result in societal breakdown.

Citation needed

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

#94

Post by sophacles »

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.

There's a lot to unpack in this little comment!

First of all - HN is a website where many different people, with different views post comments and have discussions/debates. Declaring that there's one singular view while ignoring the dozens of debates in comment sections all over the front page is kind of absurd. Some people don't think prisons work, some do. The voices calling for prison reform or abolishment may not be the same voices calling for CEO imprisonment.

Second - The idea that the law should be applied to everyone with the same vigor is not at odds with wanting to change bad laws. If the law can send a peon to prison for years, it should just as well send a CEO to prison for years too. Hell, if I think a law is bad and needs to change, having a CEO face consequences for it might cause a rare circumstance where a CEO uses their position and influence to effect the change.

Third - wanting prisons that actually rehabilitate or deter or whatever is often advocating for prison reform, not consequence-free law-breaking. I can want a murderer sent to prison at the same time I want make prisons actually effective, in fact it's pretty consistent no?

Fourth a lot of voices are louder when a CEO or official is suspect of a crime since (as in this case) often they get away with crimes far worse than those committed by people who are severely punished. Even when the ceo/official is blatantly guilty. Even more so when the ceo and officials commit additional crimes and frame innocents for them.

Fifth, in the spirit of "turnabout is fair play" - (again as in this case) the CEOs and officials that wanted to stomp out the bad actors and be tough on the crime should not be hypocritical and accept that the crimes they committed need to be stomped out and have tough consequences.

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

#95

Post by dang »

I've attempted to compile the HN threads on this. Can anybody find other significant ones? (It's interesting that there was one submission, with one comment, in 2012, and seemingly nothing for the next 7 years...)

Fujitsu CEO Deposition – Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059302 - Jan 2024 (1 comment)

Fixing Horizon bugs would have been too costly, Post Office inquiry told - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39039712 - Jan 2024 (59 comments)

Fujitsu says it will pay compensation in UK Post Office scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023695 - Jan 2024 (26 comments)

How a software glitch at the UK Post Office ruined lives - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010070 - Jan 2024 (326 comments)

Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38983144 - Jan 2024 (8 comments)

A TV Show Forced Britain's Devastating Post Office Scandal into the Light - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38951802 - Jan 2024 (168 comments)

British Post Office Scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38937705 - Jan 2024 (149 comments)

How the Post Office's Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38931792 - Jan 2024 (4 comments)

Ex Post Office CEO hands back award after IT failures lead to false convictions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38930011 - Jan 2024 (127 comments)

Post Office Horizon Enquiry – Fujitsu Report on Eposs PinICL Task Force (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926582 - Jan 2024 (1 comment)

Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38890468 - Jan 2024 (8 comments)

Mr Bates vs. the Post Office - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38869011 - Jan 2024 (3 comments)

What went wrong with Horizon: learning from the Post Office Trial - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38867712 - Jan 2024 (19 comments)

UK Post Office: 700 Horizon software scandal victims to receive £600k each - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561428 - Sept 2023 (40 comments)

After 20 years, the Post Office scandal cover-up is happening in plain sight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778486 - July 2023 (1 comment)

The UK post office database scandal – “can't see the bug = user is a thief” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35837576 - May 2023 (2 comments)

Hundreds of lives ruined by faulty UK Post Office computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35792896 - May 2023 (4 comments)

Ex UK Post Office staff tell inquiry of stress of IT scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394685 - Feb 2022 (2 comments)

Post Office scandal: Public inquiry to examine wrongful convictions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329668 - Feb 2022 (149 comments)

Post Office scandal: 'I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329510 - Feb 2022 (2 comments)

Bad software sent postal workers to jail - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26973583 - April 2021 (1 comment)

Convicted Post Office workers have names cleared - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924882 - April 2021 (187 comments)

UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913037 - April 2021 (284 comments)

UK legal system assumes that computers don't have bugs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25518936 - Dec 2020 (24 comments)

Post Office scandal: Postmasters celebrate victory against convictions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24661321 - Oct 2020 (2 comments)

Bankruptcy, jail, ruined lives: inside the Post Office scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440476 - Sept 2020 (1 comment)

Postmasters were prosecuted using unreliable evidence - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23454606 - June 2020 (2 comments)

Faults in Post Office accounting system led to workers being convicted of theft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795219 - Dec 2019 (104 comments)

Post Office hires accountants to review sub-postmasters' computer claims - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4143107 - June 2012 (1 comment)

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

#96

Post by metabagel »

worik wrote: post #68

"Patterson also told Parliament members that Fujitsu has "a moral obligation" to contribute to the compensation for victims." How often do you hear a suit talk of their "moral obligation"? That really struck me. So true So often we (computer programmers) get to walk away free and clear from the cluster fucks that arrive from our mistakes

Clearly, there must have been systemic issues at Fujitsu which allowed the accounting software to fail so spectacularly.

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

#97

Post by neilv »

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…

"The coverup is worse than the crime" is a terrible effect.

But it can happen from:

* smaller-fry butt-covering (e.g., lower-level function trying to cover their own butt, putting larger org at risk of much higher cost to the org);

* arrogance (e.g., individual/org thinks they are in the right and justified in escalating countermeasures);

* bully-like confidence (e.g., individual/org thinks they are powerful enough to get away with escalating the offense, to escape cost from the original offense).

It's not unusual, especially on smaller scales (e.g., in companies without genuine cultures of trust and integrity, many people will try to internally suppress info about failures, committing worse and/or more harmful acts in the process).

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

#98

Post by hermitcrab »

puzzledobserver wrote: post #77

The Wikipedia article on Paula Vennells tells me that the Post Office prosecuted 700 subpostmasters between 1999 and 2015 [0]. That works out to about one prosecution every 8 days. I do not know the baseline rate at which postmasters commit fraud or are prosecuted, but isn't one prosecution every 8 days an awfully high number? Shouldn't the Post Office have conducted some sort of internal investigation as soon as the…

One possibility is that the PO bosses thought that there had always been a high level of theft and that Horizons system was finally uncovering it. The ultimate case of projecting your own failings onto others by grasping and immoral execs?

I mean seriously, if you were a criminal, would you go to all the trouble to run a post office for years?

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

#99

Post by akira2501 »

jocoda wrote: post #57

There is no way to make good the harm inflicted, and I'm skeptical that anyone except, maybe the innocent, are going to be punished. The central villain of this shit show is the Post Office. The history of the project shows that - from initial procurement onwards. Poorly implemented by ICL, a UK company, taken over by Fujitsu as some sort of favour to the UK government. The developers are guilty but this is just anot…

> How do you make something like this right?

If only there was a single person ensconced with supreme authority and a duty to protect the realm around.

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

#100

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

nihonthrowaway wrote: post #37
bedobi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon lol, in my experience... well, let me not finish that sentence

As a Christian, I have learned to be in my guard when business partners tell me about their Christianity. Or any other way of signaling their self-proported ethics.

In Matthew 6 Jesus forbids praying in public, like the hypocrites did, and instead commands Christains to pray where only the "father" can see them. Overt displays of piety by Christians are the original meaning of the word "hypocrisy", they claim to be Christian but display their supposed piety for public reward in direct contradiction to Jesus's command.
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