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

nytimes.com

381–390 of 585 posts

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

#381
post #344
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?"…

> What about Fujitsu? Why can't the government make Fujitsu pay for the destruction caused by their shitty software? Because the software didn't cause it. Look, by all accounts the software was/is a piece of piss, but what made it such an egregious scandal is how the Post Office leadership dealt with things. There was really no good reason for that to happen. They just ignored reports of problems (proper reports writ…

It's not a crime when the government does it :-(

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

#382
post #7

I have followed this scandal quite closely over the years, and these two quotations sum it up. Pretty sad: "The report alleges that even before the program was rolled out in 1999, some Fujitsu employees knew that Horizon could produce false data." "As the years went by the complaints grew louder and more persistent [...] Still the Post Office trenchantly resisted the contention that on occasions Horizon produced fals…

It would not surprise me if some developers at that time reported to journalists that they had a bug in their code, they'd go to jail for fabricating evidence, cybercrime, stealing of trade secrets, breaking an NDA, or something like that.

Why not all of the above?

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

#383
What boggles my mind is that so many of us still thing more government is the way to address problems. The fact is, humans are human, and work in both government and in business. But a business cannot put you in jail or unilaterally freeze all your money.

A business can accuse you of a crime, but they will be very careful before they do as the consequences of bring wrong are very severe - for a business. Corporations can fire you or sell your data or send you targeted adds. But the risks associated with government are far worse.

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

#384
Don't forget her name: Paula Vennells (Royal Mail CEO). She went on record to state there was no issue despite reports.

I'm sure we're see justice for her actions. /s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells

Remember her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYo_gq329w

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the wording of the description of the programmer who failed to debug and labeled it user error it appears that it is fairly typical Accenture-grade software where there is no single bug so much as the program itself approximates the correct result. Their data model appears to have been akin to having a single accumulator sum up things rather than to use something like double-entry bookkeeping or an account graph…

So the errors could be down to using floats instead of decimal types?

It could be that. It could be that they just have separate code paths for measuring "amount in" and "amount reported" with an if-clause missing in one and present in the other. From the description the debugging programmer provides, it doesn't look like they had any sort of coherent design.

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

#386
post #344
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?"…

> What about Fujitsu? Why can't the government make Fujitsu pay for the destruction caused by their shitty software? Because the software didn't cause it. Look, by all accounts the software was/is a piece of piss, but what made it such an egregious scandal is how the Post Office leadership dealt with things. There was really no good reason for that to happen. They just ignored reports of problems (proper reports writ…

I'm going to have to pull you up on this detail, as you seem to care about the details.

Fujitsu/ICL won the contract to develop and run Horizon. They got a commission on every EFTPOS sale. They paid for all the computers, all the network setup, all the staff training. They literally ran the helpline. If you were a sub-postmaster and had a problem with Horizon, you called Fujitsu.

It was Fujitsu that then told you that the bug you found in Horizon wasn't a bug and nobody else was experiencing it, at exactly the same time their internal IT tickets had fully documented the bug and their staff were trying to patch up that bug before it happened to anyone else.

Fujitsu also claimed, in many court cases, that they had no remote access to Horizon. But they did. They also let engineers use it, and push one-off code fixes, to "fix-up" known errors that had been made in ledgers on the computer in your Post Office, so there was no source of truth anywhere in the system. If courts had known this, almost every Post Office private prosecution would have been thrown in the bin for unreliable evidence. Instead, courts ran on the belief that computers were like calculators, and can be assumed to be reliable unless proven faulty.

It was Fujitsu not volunteering this fact, and indeed barristers coaching Fujitsu expert witnesses on what to say and what not to reveal, ignoring procedural rules that the barristers knew had to be followed that say you have to reveal pertinent facts to the defence.

Fujitsu were in it up to their necks along with the Post Office. They made material gains by denying bugs existed, denying they had remote access, falsely claiming their system was reliable, and having their staff perjure themselves in prosecutions brought by the Post Office.

Without Fujitsu's complicity and mendacity, the Post Office might not have succeeded in prosecuting anyone - and of course, without the phantom losses caused by their broken software, they'd have no cases to prosecute.

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

#387
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the PO creates a franchise program that they later decide isn't suitable for any sane, good-faith actor, and instead of revising the terms of the franchise program to make it so, they assume that the participants are criminals and prosecute them?

The same way many think about welfare/unemployment/disability schemes. Constant hoops to jump through to prove they're looking for work or still incapable. Or in the case of illness to prove they're still sick. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59067101

Yeah but in the UK there actually are lots of people claiming benefits that probably shouldn't be. Especially Personal Independent Payments.

It's enough of an issue that even Labour (left wing) is having to deal with it. Though as usual Starmer has chickened out (I think this is like the third thing that was obviously a good move that he's backed down on after dumb backlash).

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite inspiration goes the opposite direction. The United States has this Supreme Court, a final Court of Appeal, politically independent and empowered even to decide that the government's actions are illegal. Sounds great. The UK had this rather antique thing called the "Lords of Appeal in Ordinary" aka "Law Lords" who were in theory just some Lords (ie people who are arbitrarily in the upper chamber of the P…

Politically independent?! Between an extremely dry sense of humour and sarcasm, I can't tell which.

I know I'm long winded, but, you did see there's a lot more text right?

The US Supreme Court says it's politically independent. And so the UK's Supreme Court just did that. It wasn't difficult, unlike the US the rest of our court system, including the predecessor "Law Lords" were in fact chosen by an independent non-political process already, the law making a Supreme Court more or less says "Oh, when we need more Supreme Court justices do the thing for judges again, only more so"

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible. Reading HN pays off again. Thank you for sharing. The link is to a book by a PhD neuroscientist investigation the scientific basis for shaken baby syndrome.

Yes, that's me.

Wow, that is you.

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

#390
I think that "Mr Bates vs the post office" (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27867155/) should be required watching for software developers.

It was an internal developer bearing witness that made a material difference here. If you're the developer logging in to fix errors and the postmaster scandal is in full swing, then it's time to look at being a whistleblower. If you're the developer writing code to hack emissions tests in cars, again, look at your ethics.

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