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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"

#261

Post by graemep »

Eisenstein wrote: post #259
graemep wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company or an individual can bring a private prosecute. They would have to prove the case against you beyond reasonable doubt though. The real real problem is that the courts (not just in this case) assume computer records are sufficient of guilt without independent verification they are correct. There have been previous HN discussions on the law behind this. The Crown Prosecution Service can take over a private pr…

I don't get trivializing forcing someone to have to stand trial. Have you ever been through the process? I don't know how custody works over there, but in the USA generally when dealing with a criminal proceeding you have to either spend the pre-trial and trial period in jail until you are acquitted or you have put up a bond for release which is a substantial amount of money.

I do not think that is the case with private prosecutions because they do not have powers of arrest.

We do not usually require bonds for bail here either, and AFAIK most people accused of non-violent offenses do get bail (not checked the numbers so if anyone knows better please correct me).

They would have to go to court to defend themselves though. I am pretty sure you can be awarded costs (the prosecution has to pay your legal fees, to the level the judge thinks reasonable) if acquitted, as you can if you win a civil case here.

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

#262

Post by qingcharles »

fractallyte wrote: post #215
qingcharles wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because often they are in control of all the evidence and/or can create evidence. In the 90s, I caught the technical head of a certain very large telecoms firm logging private IRC chats and then blackmailing the users, some of whom were gay and not out. When I made it clear I knew what was going on and that it needed to stop this person went on to fake logs of me hacking into said firm and sent them to the dean…

Can you say more about this, in particular, what happened next? Because it's not really over until there's justice , and the guilty person is punished . I'm hoping that's what happened next!

I don't want to go into it, except to say this was the early days of the Internet and he continued to make foolish mistakes to try and get rich at others' loss which ended with him getting personally sued into the ground by some very large corporations, so karma was delivered.

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

#263

Post by qingcharles »

conductr wrote: post #214
qingcharles wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because often they are in control of all the evidence and/or can create evidence. In the 90s, I caught the technical head of a certain very large telecoms firm logging private IRC chats and then blackmailing the users, some of whom were gay and not out. When I made it clear I knew what was going on and that it needed to stop this person went on to fake logs of me hacking into said firm and sent them to the dean…

Were you then able to prosecute him for this fraudulent conspiracy he manufactured? Is there any check and balance, like something seriously discouraging people from doing this nefariously? Is there any responsibility on the judge or jury to demand burden of evidence? As in the postmaster situation, if I were the judge or jury I first and foremost need to be convinced a crime occurred and money is missing. The fact a…

I don't know what the standards are in the UK, but certainly in the USA (and most law is based on English law) you have to "lay a foundation" for any documentary evidence that you introduce at trial. The crux of this is essentially having a witness with knowledge of the document taking the stand and swearing that the document is true and accurate. (to lie about it would technically be perjury)

p.s. my accuser received his share of karma very shortly afterwards when his misdeeds caused him to be sued out of existence by several major multinationals he tried to bully. [I can't find much about the guy any longer, but I found his name in Google Books just now in a book titled Business Law where he is used as an example of how not to be]

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

#264

Post by FerretFred »

graemep wrote: post #254
FerretFred wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seemed to be a culture in Fujitsu where incompetent and judgemental people were allowed to rule the roost. This also applies to Parliament. They're renowned for it!

There is no better alternative, and at least Parliament operates fairly transparently. It is the rest of government (civil servants and agencies, as well as politicians) that is the real problem.

The whole system is flawed.

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

#265

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

qingcharles wrote: post #263
conductr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you then able to prosecute him for this fraudulent conspiracy he manufactured? Is there any check and balance, like something seriously discouraging people from doing this nefariously? Is there any responsibility on the judge or jury to demand burden of evidence? As in the postmaster situation, if I were the judge or jury I first and foremost need to be convinced a crime occurred and money is missing. The fact a…

I don't know what the standards are in the UK, but certainly in the USA (and most law is based on English law) you have to "lay a foundation" for any documentary evidence that you introduce at trial. The crux of this is essentially having a witness with knowledge of the document taking the stand and swearing that the document is true and accurate. (to lie about it would technically be perjury) p.s. my accuser receive…

(My below remark is a tangent and isn't meant to judge your experience.)

My unqualified understanding is that UK's injurious laws (eg:defamation) are somewhat more favorable for prosecuting malicious behavior, than their US counterparts. The differences can be said to reflect a shift toward prosecuting an offender (UK) vs protecting the innocent (US).

I think we can see this whenever US govs tweak law to ease prosecutions. It's non-powerful people who can expect to feel the brunt of it. Stated differently, for each newly enabled prosecution of a well-protected person, an exponentially greater number of vulnerable people will prosecuted.

This is far from an absolute principle. It's more a comment about the trends that occur in the absence of ethics - which describes most moments in most justice systems.

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

#266

Post by paulmd »

stefan_ wrote: post #126
jahewson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear it’s the Post Office that’s accused of editing Fujitsu’s statements.

But it was Fujitsu staff acting as witnesses in trials.

GP's point is that it's not "the police" accused of editing the statements, because these were private criminal prosecutions (a unique feature of the british legal systems) in which the Post Office acted as the prosecutor.

ie it's not a matter of trusting that "officers of the court" did this, because the prosecutor was not really an officer of the court, they were acting as a private citizen or (in this case) a representative of a private corporation. You are trusting that some rando working their 9-5 did not unduly "tweak" the words of the witnesses that are used as evidence to prosecute you.

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

#267

Post by bombcar »

kelnos wrote: post #163
bombcar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in this case, where the crime is not one of violence , the punishment doesn't need to involve prison. But the people who knowingly did wrong should receive some sort of punishment, even if it is just financial or being barred from their career path.

I dunno, I think forcibly imprisoning someone under false pretenses counts as violence. Not the clear-cut obvious violence of throwing a punch or firing a gun, but still violence nonetheless. I prefer to look at it in terms of the harm caused to other people, and how direct that harm is. * Use illegal drugs? No direct harm to anyone else. * Deal drugs? Indirect harm to others. * Put someone in prison for crimes you k…

True, the “lying under oath” is compounded “not coming clean when people go to jail” and then the option of jail is on the table.

But for some cases, excessive monetary fines may be better (especially if the person who would go to jail is a low level expendable peon but the large fine would come from the company).

People may not be much deterred by punishments but large enough judgements scare the shit out of lawyers.

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

#268

Post by dang »

switch007 wrote: post #220
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…

> It's interesting that there was one submission, with one comment, in 2012, and seemingly nothing for the next 7 years... It was the recent TV mini series that got this mass attention, which triggered the mass media covering it I believe.

Yup that would be the third phrase, the recent flurry of threads. The second phase was Dec 2019 thru Sept 2023, to judge by the list above. But it's interesting that nothing showed up between June 2012 and Dec 2019...unless I just missed it, of course.

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

#269

Post by raffraffraff »

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 does seem to go far deeper than a single contract for a single piece of poorly written software.

Paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-...

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/aaJyc

Summary: In the 1960s, the government merged a bunch of companies "at gunpoint", creating behemoths like British Leyland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland) and ICL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite...) that were to compete with international giants.

ICL couldn't beat IBM, but the government were committed to "buying British". That left the government with shit computers and systems. It still didn't help ICL, so in 1981 they faced bankruptcy. Since the government was the biggest user of ICL systems, civil servants persuaded Thatcher that "if ICL went bust, the government would grind to a halt". So ICL was rescued, with the aid of trusted Japanese tech firm Fujitsu. ICL lost its monopoly status, but was deeply embedded in the British state. You know the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Well in the British Government, replace "IBM" with "ICL".

In 1995 the British government decided to automate their social welfare system. "Project Pathway" was a disaster. It got dumped 4 years later, but the Post Office still went ahead and used it, this time calling it "Project Horizon". According to insiders, everybody knew it was a "bag of shit". By now, ICL was fully owned by Fujitsu, who told the Blair government that if they didn’t sign the deal, ICL would collapse. So the deal was signed. And what a mess for all involved.

This isn't an isolated case though. ICL/Fujitsu built another system for the Cabinet Office in No. 10, for highly classified material. It was absolute trash, taking half an our to boot, and Ministers refused to use it. They dumped the system, prompting Fujitsu to sue for breach of contract. But, even as the Cabinet Office was decommissioning it, another branch of government was buying it.

Why? Partly because of EU rules, departments couldn't share their experiences with a given supplier or system. If a department knew that ICL/Fujitsu sucked, it might influence future contracts "and everyone would be sued".

Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.

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