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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"

#171

Post by EasyMark »

dang wrote: post #95

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 - http…

Thanks dang, someone more industrious than me could turn this into a CompSci or Tech term paper or great Medium/Substack article (or series). Also computer ethics case study as well for those professors out there, but maybe it needs to cook a while longer for more details to come out

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

#172

Post by Eisenstein »

anigbrowl wrote: post #166
Eisenstein wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. The Post office was doing this. As a citizen of the USA, this is a completely alien concept to me. How can a corporation put a person in prison?

Look up how much power postal inspectors have in the US. They can arrest you if you commit crimes that fall within their jurisdiction.

The Postal Inspector in the USA is not a private entity, and they cannot prosecute you. There is not 'Postal Prosecutor' there is District Attorney and a Federal Prosecutor and they are either directly elected or appointed by elected officials.

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

#173

Post by mananaysiempre »

Eisenstein wrote: post #153
conductr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes totally but shouldn’t it have been the prosecution that hired forensic accountants in order to, well, prosecute

In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. The Post office was doing this. As a citizen of the USA, this is a completely alien concept to me. How can a corporation put a person in prison?

> In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. [...] How can a corporation put a person in prison?

On criminal trial, not in prison. (Prosecute, not convict.) In theory, this sounds like it could somewhat mitigate the phenomenon where a law is on the books but the DoJ or whoever employs public prosecutors decides to just ignore it. (Whether that’d be a good thing or a bad one from a separation of powers perspective I’m not sure.)

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

#174

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #34
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.

Over time, my thoughts on prison have evolved. I no longer consider their purpose to be punishment, but instead simply segregating people from society who refuse to follow the rules of society. The segregation is enough punishment itself, more punishment doesn't need to be heaped on.

A corollary to this would be non-violent offenders would be sent to Camp Cupcake, the violent ones to a prison with cells to keep them from preying on their fellow inmates.

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

#175

Post by Eisenstein »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #173
Eisenstein wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. The Post office was doing this. As a citizen of the USA, this is a completely alien concept to me. How can a corporation put a person in prison?

> In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. [...] How can a corporation put a person in prison? On criminal trial, not in prison. (Prosecute, not convict.) In theory, this sounds like it could somewhat mitigate the phenomenon where a law is on the books but the DoJ or whoever employs public prosecutors decides to just ignore it. (Whether that’d be a good thing or a bad one from a separation of powers perspecti…

> On criminal trial, not in prison.

In this case they ended up getting guilty pleas in exchange for 'promises' of leniency. That sounds like 'putting people in prison using leverage' to me. With an imbalance between resources of the entity going after you and what you have available, I would say the giant corp will win the overwhelming majority of the time.

The problem is that they have every incentive to push people to pay them/take a deal with what is essentially extortion and there is no oversight. If the city prosecutor were threatening otherwise upstanding citizens with jail time if they didn't pay them many thousands of pounds for mystery expenses viewable by only the prosecutor, that person would be impeached or at least lose the next election, then be prosecuted for corruption. No such luck when the entity pursuing is 'faceless corporation that needs to maximize profits and has no person held to account for injustice'. I fail to see how this is in the public interest.

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

#176

Post by ikidd »

EasyMark wrote: post #168
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…

It's terrible that it's starting to look more and more like they would rather let people go to prison rather than just fix the software and make everyone whole before it got out of hand.

Prison? Heck, 4 people committed suicide over the course of this malfeasance and there's be a pile of bankruptcies and divorces. If they can prove what seems to have obviously happened here, there should be a pile of jail time involved.

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

#177

Post by ikidd »

puzzledobserver wrote: post #81
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…

> "In 2013, Vennells hired forensic accounting firm Second Sight, headed up by Ron Warmington, to investigate the Horizon software losses. Warmington discovered the system was flawed and faulty, but Vennells was unhappy with Warmington's report and terminated their contract." Inexcusable.

> terminated their contract

Two days before the report was due to be released.

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

#178

Post by chris_wot »

neilv wrote: post #97
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 t…

There seemed to be a culture in Fujitsu where incompetent and judgemental people were allowed to rule the roost.

The best example of this is the testimony of one Peter Sewell, who never met one of the victims but who, in an email, called him a “nasty chap” and that he was out to “rubbish the FJ name”.

You can see how he realises the enormity of his stupidity in testimony and tries to half heartedly defend himself (unsuccessfully):

https://youtu.be/fGCsvjYNWr0?si=q-ss0T35RFOecv7n

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

#179

Post by chris_wot »

lazide wrote: post #136
hermitcrab wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you went to all the trouble of running a post office for years - would you mind ‘losing’ a package or two every once in awhile to pad your retirement?

No.

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

#180

Post by mananaysiempre »

Eisenstein wrote: post #175
mananaysiempre wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. [...] How can a corporation put a person in prison? On criminal trial, not in prison. (Prosecute, not convict.) In theory, this sounds like it could somewhat mitigate the phenomenon where a law is on the books but the DoJ or whoever employs public prosecutors decides to just ignore it. (Whether that’d be a good thing or a bad one from a separation of powers perspecti…

> On criminal trial, not in prison. In this case they ended up getting guilty pleas in exchange for 'promises' of leniency. That sounds like 'putting people in prison using leverage' to me. With an imbalance between resources of the entity going after you and what you have available, I would say the giant corp will win the overwhelming majority of the time. The problem is that they have every incentive to push people…

I mean, many others have used the same tactics with civil suits—being stripped of all of one’s money might be marginally better than being put in prison, but I’d argue it’s still on the same spectrum, so it makes for a hell of a lot of leverage.

So I don’t think this works as an argument against private prosecutors—it’s rather an argument against a legal system that necessitates ruinously expensive lawyers, which is a major problem, but one I see no solution for, not even a blank-slate one. (To be clear, I still reserve my judgment on whether private prosecutors are actually a good idea. What do you do if a private party takes up a murder investigation and screws it up?.. I’m not ready to give up non bis in idem for this. On the other hand, the idea sounds sufficiently reasonable that I probably wouldn’t have thought to question it had I been brought up to think it were normal.)

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