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At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

nytimes.com

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Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#211

Post by jen20 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #154
akudha wrote: post #140

This was depressing to read. Failures at so many levels. 1. Immediately after Horizon was rolled out, issues were reported. But ignored 2. Prosecutors didn't bother to verify if there is another explanation before accusing thousands of people of stealing? Isn't it common sense to pause for a second and think, "could we please double check the evidence? how can thousands of postal workers suddenly turn into thieves?"…

I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points. One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed. The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being r…

> They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible

This will change when elected officials start getting hoisted by their own electronic petards.

The Venn diagram of midwit enterprise developers who build systems with audit trails yet could not swear under penalty of perjury that the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case is almost a circle.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#212

Post by octopoc »

lokeg wrote: post #160
octopoc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It assigns agency to the person who died. Think about it this way: I have relative who is vegan, so she has been trying to convince me to kill myself for many years now. I can still choose whether I do it though, and obviously I chose not to so far, although during COVID I didn’t have much other social interaction, so I nearly went through with it. I had agency throughout though. I’m not dead because I chose not to g…

What?

Agency is the ability to act. If someone dies against their own will, they don’t have agency, which is why we don’t use language like “they committed their own death” to refer to such instances.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#213

Post by varispeed »

ThisNameIsTaken wrote: post #43
throw0101c wrote: post #12

The four-part mini-series Mr Bates vs The Post Office is worth checking out: > A faulty IT system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of subpostmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates, forms the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. The prosecutions…

What is particularly striking about the scandal is the impact of the mini-series. From what I understand (as a foreigner to the UK) is that it was the mini-series that sparked national interest in the case. Without it, those involved would still be in a bureaucratic and legal nightmare, in which all institutions rejected their innocence claims, and hardly anyone would have been held accountable. See also the "Impact"…

There are other scandals in the UK, like IR35 that basically prevents worker owned businesses from making profit, then resulting cottage industry of parasitic "umbrella companies" and tumbling economy. But directly affected people are easily generalised as those with broader shoulders so the public couldn't care less if they cannot run their little businesses. Meanwhile big consultancies that lobbied for it are getting minted on public sector contracts, they have very much a monopoly now. Things are more expensive and shittier. Oh and then Boriswave - as if captive services market wasn't enough for big corporations - they also got to import the cheapest available workers instead of hiring locals.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#214

Post by nightpool »

imtringued wrote: post #68
rwmj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary (and getting that evidence is basically impossible for the individuals being charged who were post office workers, not computer experts, and the source code was a trade secret). This might change, partly in response to…

The emperor has no clothes. Oxford is the worlds AI Safety research hub and yet they didn't think about campaigning to overturn a law which negates their entire reason for existing?

Oxford is the world's what? If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#215

Post by arrowsmith »

Horffupolde wrote: post #9

Suicide is a verb and result by itself. Would the author also say “he died by murder”?

> Suicide is a verb

Not in English. Although it's a verb in many languages, which is why "he suicided" is a common ESL mistake.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#216

Post by jen20 »

imtringued wrote: post #68
rwmj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary (and getting that evidence is basically impossible for the individuals being charged who were post office workers, not computer experts, and the source code was a trade secret). This might change, partly in response to…

The emperor has no clothes. Oxford is the worlds AI Safety research hub and yet they didn't think about campaigning to overturn a law which negates their entire reason for existing?

Arguments made towards right-wing government (which the UK had for the past decade) from higher education are unlikely to be well received. Perhaps somewhat by Cameron, certainly not in the post-Brexit idiocracy of May, Johnson, Truss or Sunak.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#217

Post by Akronymus »

akudha wrote: post #162
PaulRobinson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points. One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed. The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being r…

Lets ignore everything else for a second. Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight? We're talking about postal workers for fuck's sake, not a bunch of mafia dudes. Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors to send as many people to jail as possible, guilty or not? run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" Oh well, now their p…

afaict, the assumption was they already were, and were just uncovered.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#218

Post by throw0101c »

ThisNameIsTaken wrote: post #43
throw0101c wrote: post #12

The four-part mini-series Mr Bates vs The Post Office is worth checking out: > A faulty IT system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of subpostmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates, forms the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. The prosecutions…

What is particularly striking about the scandal is the impact of the mini-series. From what I understand (as a foreigner to the UK) is that it was the mini-series that sparked national interest in the case. Without it, those involved would still be in a bureaucratic and legal nightmare, in which all institutions rejected their innocence claims, and hardly anyone would have been held accountable. See also the "Impact"…

> From what I understand (as a foreigner to the UK) is that it was the mini-series that sparked national interest in the case.

The case was done with by 2019:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_%26_Others_v_Post_Office...

The mini-series aired in 2024. Perhaps it was a bit more obscure pre-airing, but things were sorted out already.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#219

Post by jordanb »

hnfong wrote: post #199
jordanb wrote: post #191

I went on a deep dive on this scandal about a year or so ago. One thing that struck me is the class element. Basically, the Post Office leadership could not understand why someone would buy a PO franchise. It's a substantial amount of money up front, and people aren't allowed to buy multiple franchises, so every PO was an owner/operator position. Essentially people were "buying a job". The people in leadership couldn…

Fascinating. Do you have references for the motives/biases of the PO leadership?

My entry-point was listening to this podcast, it's pretty long but it goes into the fact that the purpose of horizon was to detect fraud and reduce shrinkage, that the leadership and their consultants were coming up with outsized estimates for the amount of fraud and using that as financial justification for the project.

They also talk about postmaster's motivations for buying a franchise and how sitting behind a retail desk in a small town with a modest but steady income is actually one of the best outcomes available to the type of working-class Briton who was buying the franchise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#220

Post by petesergeant »

justin66 wrote: post #175
duncans wrote: post #143

What is amazing is the engineers the Fujitsu employed would testify in court against some of the subpostmasters saying "there were no faults" where in unearthed evidence of their support logs they could be clearly acknowledging bugs that could create false accounts, manually updating records and audit logs to balance it out (and also sometimes screwing that up). See Nick Wallis' coverage: * https://www.postofficetria…

Pretty sure I can guess the answer, but: does the UK have professional licensure for "software engineers?"

Yes, software engineers can become Chartered Engineers via the BCS:

https://www.bcs.org/membership-and-registrations/get-registe...

Has anyone, ever? I've met precisely one.

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