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

Bugs are inevitable. The real issue is with the post office management that prosecuted people they knew there was a good chance were innocent, withheld evidence, falsified evidence, and harassed journalists investigating.

What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon

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

witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court were then edited by the Post Office as it sought to maintain the line that the system was working well as it pursued innocent people through the courts.

I have generally found that there's not that much relation between people's stated beliefs and their actual every-day behaviour. By and large, I do think their beliefs are genuine and heart-felt, and that they're not faking them. It's just that it doesn't really influence their daily behaviour all that much. Generally people are motivated by the incentives of the moment, emotion of the moment, and that kind of thing. I am no exception to this by the way.

People often assume that if someone has the "right set of beliefs" (whatever that "right set" is, which may or may not be religious) that they're also a good person. I'm not saying there is zero correlation for all people, but typically it's very small at best, if it even exists at all.

People often assume that if someone has the "right set of beliefs" (whatever that "right set" is) that they're also a good person.

IIUC, there are a few aspects of Christian theology that muddy this issue a bit. I'm probably a bit wrong, so I'd be grateful for any corrections:

1) Christians believe in progressive sanctification. I.e., the Holy Spirit works, over time, to make Christians more like Jesus. So you really should expect true Christians, on average, to gradually become better people.

2) Not everyone professing to be a Christian truly is [0].

As an agnostic, those issues have frustrated my efforts to decide if Christianity generally true.

[0] https://www.openbible.info/topics/fake_christians

I've yet to meet any Christians who don't contradict other Christians, while being 100% convinced their personal beliefs are correct and all those other interpretations are wrong.

So I don't think No True Christian is relevant here.

Whatever religion the CEO was cosplaying, the bottom line is that she was involved in organising an aggressive criminal cover-up which caused multiple suicides, unlawful jail terms, and bankruptcies.

She must have done this knowingly, because it's unimaginable that information about these problems didn't filter through to the board.

Ultimately everyone on the board is personally responsible, and should be treated accordingly.

I've yet to meet any Christians who don't contradict other Christians, while being 100% convinced their personal beliefs are correct and all those other interpretations are wrong.

Christian means "Christ-like", it's not surprising that different people have different interpretations of what that means.

But my experience has been the stronger someone proclaims their christianity, the less trustworthy they are in general.

That may seem paradoxical, but consider that I'm not christian which means they feel more justified in treating me as an out-group.

The most die-hard christian I've ever met once got into a fist fight with one of his tenants for being late on the rent. He also, at one point, climbed onto his roof with a compound bow every night for several weeks because some thieves stole a generator and he wanted to catch them coming back.

He also one time told me this story about he was doing a job (he had a lawn care business) and this group of mexicans just randomly attacked and beat the crap out of him. No, I didn't believe the ass-whooping was undeserved.

Jesus himself said that worship of God is a thing that is private. That those who loudly proclaim or make public displays of their faith are straying from the path.

Matthew 28:18-20 quotes Jesus as saying ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’

Jesus was really annoying to many, many people when he was going around preaching to large crowds. The fact that he was viewed as a rabble rouser and demagogue played a significant role in his death. (Along with proclaiming that he was the Son of God).

I usually avoid religious discussions, but I really would appreciate a citation on this considering it is the exact opposite of what is actually attested to him:

https://biblehub.com/matthew/10-27.htm

it's not surprising that different people have different interpretations of what that means.

Perhaps that's not surprising, but it's certainly "un-Christ-like" to be so arrogant to think your interpretations are right and everyone else is doing it wrong.

Of course, most organized religion has at least some focus on telling people outside their religion that they're doing it wrong, so this attitude among religious people shouldn't be surprising, either.

So you really should expect true Christians, on average, to gradually become better people.

Only if I accept their beliefs as accurate.

You shouldn’t have to accept the beliefs, just the virtues, if it’s a religion with a stated goal of making people virtuous (excluding some polytheistic faiths, for instance).

The poster upthread said that the mechanism for becoming better people was that the Holy Spirit makes it so. If the Holy Spirit doesn't exist, then the only mechanism for self-improvement is one's own ability to make those improvements, consciously.

Virtues alone don't make people better. Doing the hard work to introspect and actually make yourself better... that's what makes you better.

Or even their professions of belief to actually be something approaching truthful.

But there are many incentives, both on a self-deceptive psychology level, and on a societal-wide level, for wanting to be seen as a virtuous and forthright person irrespective of one's actual behaviours or beliefs.

All logic following from illogical things such as religion, are flawed and utterly useless. Determining anything based on it, is a waste of thought and energy. You'd be better off debating laws within the Star Trek universe.

All logic following from illogical things such as religion, are flawed and utterly useless.

Interesting take considering the scientific method arose originally as a method for understanding God's consistent and ordered creation.

Just because you don't agree with something, or are not otherwise familiar with it, does not mean it is illogical.

I wasn't even talking about Christians specifically, or even religion. Just "beliefs" in the broadest possible sense. I don't know if it's better or worse among Christians (or a subsection of Christians) as opposed to anything else (e.g. political affiliation or beliefs).

I am hesitant to start listing examples, as I don't want to side-track this discussion too much.

I think there's probably a bit of a general assumption to consider people on "your team" to be "one of the good guys". Perhaps this ties in with how people tend to justify their own actions. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from.

Sometimes it is also used as protective coloration, to blend in and be passed over for scrutiny because of the outwardly visible religious affiliation signalling 'good person here, no need to look any closer'. That's one reason why Catholic priests got away with all their crap for so long.

Paul has letters admonishing christians for not being christians. We see everyday that professing christians often are not christians. All I can say is that christ called all of us to love God and love our neighbors.

Not everyone professing to be a Christian truly is.*

Ah, so they're Scotsmen.

I feel like that falls under the "no true scotsman"[0] fallacy. Rather than just branding every self-professed Christian a "fake Christian" if they don't actually gradually become a better person throughout their lives, it's probably more reasonable and useful to recognize that people are flawed, and, despite their sincerely-held beliefs and convictions, often still do bad things.

(Of course, magical, invisible spirits that change your personality and values are unlikely to actually exist, so the point is somewhat moot.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

you really should expect true Christians, on average, to gradually become better people.

I think you can only expect them to gradually become more Christian, and every Christian defines what that means for themselves. There is no definition of goodness that is shared by all Christians.

Related, started realizing that "being a principled person" doesn't really mean "having (stated) principles", it means belief that you can (and should) have principles that you're trying to apply consistently and continuously.

Lots of people have principles. Not so many people are principled.

Perhaps, but if they're unstated, what prevents you revising your principles after the fact, to fit your actions?

Anyway the UK Fujitsu/Postmaster scandal is about a huge chain of dishonest human behavior, not bugs in software.

Being principled would preclude you from changing those principles to excuse your own bad behavior.

Put another way, if you were to do this, then you weren't really principled in the first place, were you?

And it's not like people don't say out loud that they are a certain way, and then act against that. There's no magic in principles being explicitly stated.

But that wouldn't be proveable, if they never stated their principles. Almost anyone could then claim to be principled if they didn't state what principles, unless we knew the innermost contents of their mind; or unless their behavior was grossly self-contradictory (rather than nuanced, or deniable).

There's no magic in principles being explicitly stated.

Sure there is: we can see the audit trail of precisely what principle they claimed to adhere to and, when. For example in this case the defence for Paula Vennells (and other key figures) is going to be very interesting. What if Vennells blames expert advice, or the prosecutors, or Fujitsu?

Perhaps, but if they're unstated, what prevents you revising your principles after the fact, to fit your actions?

then you're not a principled person, that's why actions speak louder than words.

Your actual principles are demonstrated by how you act when nobody is looking.

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?

I think everyone would have fought for survival. But there is a difference between survival, and creating an orderly and prosperous civilization in harsh surroundings.

Other groups would adapt to their local community, blend in, so there would be no need to move out and found countries.

I've found it is easier than that. If a system is setup so that professing a belief will get someone a benefit, then you will find a ton of people claiming said belief.

Now, there are also people that will act counter to their beliefs for other reasons. Sometimes for reasons you don't know. But that is, largely, a different thing.

Wasn't there a study of ethicists which pointed out that even ethicists were not particularly more ethical in their day to day behavior?

More and more, I have come to regard what people state as their beliefs or guiding principles as some kind of mission statement buried on a corporate website. It's more congruent with reality.

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.

My gut feeling: Being Christian is a very weak signal. Telling people that you're Christian (in a context where it's not important to do so) strongly signals a desire for social prominence, which is itself usually a bad sign.

I expect this holds for other religions too, I just don't have much experience there.

Telling people that you're Christian (in a context where it's not important to do so) strongly signals a desire for social prominence, which is itself usually a bad sign.

This happens just about everywhere, including right here on HN.

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.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6%3A5-8...

He did not forbid anything there. He simply said not to pray publicly to try to earn points since God would not fall for it.

In Matthew 10:27, he advises people to tell everyone everything he has told them:

https://biblehub.com/matthew/10-27.htm

To be fair, I imagine trying to earn points is not the same thing in his eyes as telling others what he taught them.

To speak more generally and not about you in specific, it would be nice if people interpreting religious texts on the internet would at least take a college class on them like I did. It enables you to avoid some of the more common pitfalls, although it is still possible to make mistakes. I took the time to consult an actual theologian on a number of things when I was younger, which was even more useful than the college class.

That said, even trained theologians will make mistakes on these things. My favorite example is the “vinegar” offered to Jesus on the cross. It was actually a drink called posca, which is basically water sanitized by vinegar with herbs optionally added for additional flavor. When the story was written in Greek, the convention at the time was to call that drink vinegar and everyone understood that drinking vinegar meant drinking water that had a few % vinegar and possible herbs added, yet now many years later when almost nobody does that anymore, most people misunderstand what it means. Even trained theologians will misunderstand that because they are not familiar with ancient Mediterranean dietary habits. They imagine the solider that offered the vinegar as being cruel, when in fact, he was the sole nice guy among the Romans there. It would not be surprising if during Roman persecution of Christians, the act had been used as an example of not all Romans being bad, yet today if you hear about it, it is incorrectly used to demonstrate the cruelty of the Romans.

Interestingly, despite Latin having the word posca, the Latin translation did not properly translate this. The translator had been a huge fan of Greek so much that he used Latin incorrectly in a number of places to mimic Greek grammar and word definitions. He used the word for “and” as a word for also instead of the proper Latin word “quoque”, because the Greek word καὶ could mean either “and” or “also”, and no Latin word meant both at once. Given that he did that, it is no surprise that he also wrote vinegar and expected everyone to apply the Greek interpretation. Then translations of the Latin translation into other languages followed where the translators had no clue that vinegar had been written in place of posca due to an ancient convention. By the time translations were done from the original Greek, Greek had adopted posca as a loanword from Latin and almost nobody remembered the original convention, so the English translations continue to say vinegar despite English never using the word vinegar to refer to vinegar-sanitized water (with optional herbs).

There is a video by a youtube historian that talks about posca in detail and mentions the biblical account:

https://youtu.be/2nBVsW0LtQI

There are other YouTube videos on this, but that is the one where I first learned about this. Also, to make this tangent useful to anyone who has read it to the end, I find that posca actually enhances the flavors in modern Italian food. Note that I used apple vinegar when making my own, which is not the same vinegar people in the ancient Mediterranean likely used, but it was close enough for my purposes. Also, for a laugh, imagine this. In 2000 years, it is possible that people will think making children drink soda was a form of punishment. That is about as close to what children consider soda to be today as most discussion of religious texts on the internet is to what those texts actually say.

I'll go so far as to say anyone who mentions it in a business context (or especially leads with it) is almost certainly going to be some form of scam.

If it's anything beyond a little add in the church bulletin or a small fish on a truck, it's probably indicative.

as a former choir boy ... well, let me not finish that sentence

Bugs are inevitable.

Yes

But accounting software that gets totals wrong is not inevitable

Entirely avoidable

And can't the numbers be, I dunno, audited?!!?!!? WTF. Like, did all these numbers just get spit out to a jury and then these people were prosecuted? How in the hell?????

I mean, the DOD/Pentagon has not been able to finish an audit and account for their finances to the GAO (General Accounting Office) for many years now. There's a proposal that they will be able to pass a clean audit in 2027.

Just sayin' ...

I'm not sure yet, but my impression is that the "Single Source of Truth" was an append-only message-list, written periodically to write-only CD-ROM. This was difficult to query, so extracts were pulled down to an investigator's workstation, to be processed into spreadsheet format, that the prosecutors and auditors could consume.

That conversion to spreadsheet-format was also unreliable, and required human intervention. So the data presented to the court wasn't the raw Single Source of Truth, but rather had been through a dodgy extraction process, in which human error was possible, and which resulted in Excel spreadsheets with hacked macros for "fixing" errors.

Excel itself is not famous for it's reliability and trustworthiness as accounting software.

Seriously now, with all this information now available, shouldn't all the people that lied and rewrote statements be prosecuted for perjury?

2 of them are being investigated by the Met Police for perjury right now. Not much info right now and its being paused whilst the inquiry is going on.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember". But yes, they should and probably will be. But just for show.

This should be the case, and as sibling comments notes, 2 of them are being investigated.

Unfortunately though, police forces around the world are not tasked with solving and prosecuting cases like this, which involve at least, extreme malfeasance, and more likely, malice with the goal of protecting oneself within X public/private institute they have a position in. This is a massively high profile case, so it will get some attention.

Instead the task is for the police is increasingly to mediate minor interpersonal disputes between individuals (easy wins) and ignore anything bigger and more complicated.

What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon

At the risk of making a No True Scotsman argument, it's anyone's guess as to whether or not she truly is a Christian.

The only conclusion I can really draw from this is that she apparently acted in a way that's not consistent with Christian ideals.

She acted just like a person with Christian ideals.

She acted just like a person with Christian ideals.

How so?

The main conclusion I draw from this is that people will generally do whatever they want or feel they need to do, and their religious beliefs or affiliations continue to not really matter all that much.

she apparently acted in a way that's not consistent with Christian ideals

Considering that "Christian ideals", depending on whom you ask, can include some pretty bad things, I don't think this matters all that much.

How is that relevant, other than making him a bit of more a hypocrite?

Her

If you want to turn one's life into living hell, it helps to ask a priest for help.

Absolutely. Another example: people are routinely sent to jail based on highly sensitive field drug tests which have significant rates of false positives.

The CEO Priest is a head scratcher all by itself

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

It's generous of you to assume that someone's religious affiliation would have any impact on how they conduct their professional lives. Perhaps she should consider working within her preferred religious organization and leave the job open to people whose ethics are more closely aligned with their customers (in this case the presumably secular government of the UK) otherwise people might mistake her as a greedy self-centered plutocrat.

What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organization at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon

Why does that bother you? It's just a bunch of lies too.

What really bothers me is that the CEO of the Organisation at the time was also a Christian priest/deacon

Because Priests have never done anything bad before?

falsified evidence

I haven't heard any testimony that would lead to that conclusion (yet).

There does seem to have been routine falsification of records; "everyone" knew the system was buggy, so there were standard procedures for correcting incorrect records. When those procedures failed, and the records became even more incorrect as a result, PO managers just gave up and blamed the subpostmasters.

In general, as much as we trash on the US judicial system the UK judicial system makes it even harder to have any sort of recourse in a situation like this.

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 frequency of prosecutions hit a number this high?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells

"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.

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?

A lawyer paid by the private party fills the role of the government prosecutor, but the case is heard by the same judge and jury who would hear it in a state prosecution.

Until the 1980s this was how almost all criminal prosecutions worked in England, though by the end the "private prosecutor" was usually a police officer.

So a company with money and a good lawyer could really just essentially have you thrown in jail? Seems really not good.

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 of the university where I was studying and there was a serious attempt to have me expelled and talk of criminal charges. I was only saved by the heads of the computing department who vouched for my good character and independently proved that the logs were fake.

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 forensic accountant wasn’t required is still odd to me. I suppose they were glad to call guilty on circumstantial evidence or just took the financial statements at face value

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]

You are missing a crucial factor which is that the Post office leveraged prosecution for a much larger 'theft' crime in order to pressure the defendants to plead guilty to a lesser 'bookkeeping' crime along with 'repayment' of missing funds. It was a shakedown.

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.

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 prosecution and then drop it.

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.

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.)

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.

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.)

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 if one thing is terrible let's use that to justify something worse?

I’m just not convinced they are different things. Instead, what you’ve said sounds like a general argument against allowing people (and other legal entities) to bring others to court.

A prosecutor has broad powers to force a person to defend themselves in court and take a chance that they may lose -- this is incredibly coercive.

You are letting a profit motivated entity hold those powers over its own contractors in order to threaten them with lengthy jail sentences unless they agree to pay back the contested money and plead guilty to a lessor crime (which then makes it impossible to ever assert you were wrongly convicted and shouldn't have to pay).

To add to this, a corporation is does not have a corporeal presence that can be held to account for doing something egregious -- they just get fined and anyone involved almost always says 'I was just doing my job, a cog in the machine' and that's the end of that, whereas if a public prosecutor was extorting the community to pay them large sums of money or face an uncertain trial where they cannot access the evidence needed to prove their innocence, then that prosecutor could be put on trial themselves.

this sounds like it could somewhat mitigate the phenomenon

Wouldn't work in the UK; the Director of Public Prosecutions (a member of the government) has the power to take over a private prosecution, and then drop all charges.

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.

That's why I said 'they can arrest you', a fact which surprises a lot of people when they first discover it.

Technically anyone can arrest you.

It still goes to the regular courts. The problem comes when the prosecution lies and fabricates evidence.

Private prosecutions are still possible in some US states and were more common historically: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_S...

Also: https://law.umn.edu/events/what-process-due-history-and-use-....

I’m not saying that private prosecutions are a good idea, but they’re not completely alien to the US.

I get the impression that, no, forensic accountants were not used in the prosecutions, and they instead just relied on the software's accounting. From the bugs described, it seems like forensic accountants legitimately looking at specific cases would have been unable to confidently state that funds were missing.

The Post Office was the prosecution! That's what makes this even worse...

Vennells deserves to spend the rest or her life in prison. An evil piece of work that one.

terminated their contract

Two days before the report was due to be released.

I think the more important variable is how many subpostmasters there are. If there are millions then 700 is impressive.

As of 2023, there were 6727 subpostmasters.

So about 10% committed fraud.

Seems a little high - but I could believe it if the subpostmasters are the local "boss", handling cash, and are supposed to pay 'the blokes in London' who they never meet.

Also, most subpostmasters had many employees - and I believe if any one of their employees was commiting fraud/stealing money, then it was the sub postmaster responsible - so that 10% number might actually only be 1% if every branch had 10 people involved in the running of it.

It was the arrogance that they thought that these subpostmasters had been doing this for years, and just been caught out by their new computer system.

The contempt for their staff is insane

The contempt for their staff is insane

Subpostmasters are not Post Office staff; they are self-employed shopkeepers, who sign a contract with the PO to run the office in a part of their shop. I suspect that part of the contempt is precisely because the subpostmasters are not PO managers who have struggled up the greasy Post Office management pole. They are "civilians", and bureaucrats often despise civilians.

I think this is too generous a take given the facts we know that happened.

First, the time period we’re talking about here is 16 years. You’re telling me that the post office in 16 years couldn’t figure out how 10% of their branches were having persistent problems with their counts for 16 years! What business operates this way when dealing with such large amounts of money. At a minimum even if it was legit fraud by the subpostmasters this would be an indictment of the competence of the Post Office in managing the offices.

Then there’s gems like this:

Some subpostmasters noticed the new system reporting false shortfalls, sometimes for thousands of pounds, but the Post Office insisted that the system was robust and, when shortfalls occurred, prosecuted the subpostmasters or forced them to make good the amounts, as required by their contract.

Then an audit that was disputed and ignored:

In 2012, as a result of pressure from campaigners and Members of Parliament, the Post Office appointed forensic accountants Second Sight to conduct an investigation into Horizon. Second Sight concluded that Horizon contained faults that could result in accounting discrepancies, but the Post Office insisted that there were no systemic problems with the software.

Finally, the most egregious thing is that even if you go back in time and are an honest player, as the convictions start happening more and more often, maybe at some point you go and ask the question “what changed in 1999 when we started prosecuting and why weren’t we catching this fraud before? Did we become better at it somehow?”

Actually it corresponds to the rollout of the system. It’s possible of course that this system added new auditing capabilities that didn’t exist before but honestly 10% is still ridiculously high.

Ultimately, the facts of the case are pretty clear this is bad faith from the Post Office (and maybe Fujitsu) top to bottom. There’s no point playing hypotheticals with good faith actors when the Post Office even had audits showing the software was buggy and the response was to dispute the audits they themselves contracted. It’s beyond the pale.

Couldn’t find the exact number, but anywhere from 9k-12k according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Limited#Services

That’s ~8.5% of their subpostmasters that were arrested (the actual number according to Wikipedia is 900 not 700). That seems really high to me.

Also I think you meant to say that 700 out of millions would be unimpressive instead of impressive right?

Those are positions. The roster is constantly churning and this spanned several years. Either way, it’s apparent the truth didn’t want to be known. I’m actually curious why these people were pursued if in theory everyone could have been. It’s like the head guy could just victimize people at will. Was he just having some sick fun or coming down on specific people for some reason.

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.

Then you’re doing better than they expected 10% of their sub postmasters to be doing.

PO bosses thought that there had always been a high level of theft

From the testimony, it seems that is rather likely. PO managers seem to have had a pretty bad attitude to subpostmasters in general. I think the general view was that subpostmasters are essentially village shopkeepers, drawn from a population that would happily engage in grift if the opportunity presented itself, and therefore needed close monitoring.

While Paula is getting all the attention, mostly due to appearing in the dramatisation, I'd point out that we haven't heard from Adam Crozier who was CEO of the Royal Mail from 2003 - 2010 which was a fairly key period when this was all going down.

I pick on him particularly because after he handed the role over to Vennells, he went over to ITV for a number of years. The same ITV who provides the very dramatisation that brought all this stuff into the public eye once again.

That said, he had left ITV well before the series would have started production so it may have just been a creative decision rather than due to any outside influence.

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

Worth noting that the executive producer of the show, Patrick Spence, was asked about why Adam Crozier was not present in the show in an interview with The Times. Here is a timestamp of the question and answer: https://youtu.be/3KfMptK294M?t=251

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.

i'd posit that you're jumping to a conclusion.

we've never actually tried prosecuting/convicting/incarcerating CEOs or other high level officials, so we don't know what the deterrent on that would actually be. we need to run the experiments through to the end to see.

Ken Lay of Enron.

The exception that proves the rule. It would have been more accurate for OP to have said we haven't tried prosecuting and imprisoning CEOs, etc, with the same vigor we apply to street crime.

Every great once in a while, yes, we actually prosecute the hell out of a few executives. But it's hardly commonplace.

I suspect that it’s not really the crimes, per se, which makes a CEO be prosecuted. Like Joseph Nacchio.

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.

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 know they didn't commit? Direct harm to others. (And on top of that, abuse of the trust that the public has put in you, in allowing you to have that power over others.)

The magnitude of harm should also factor in, but I think that's a discussion for another day.

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.

Why is it that the same people who call for capital punishment, suddenly loose all their steam if you agree with them and say Boeing executives should be first in line for killing 300 people?

Kinda like the people who think the Capitol police should have just shot all the rioters.

Because those people are made of straw. They can only speak when you speak for them.

The kind of response you see in this case is a call for a payback for the miscarriage of justice that destroyed people's lives. Quite justified given what was done to hundreds of people.

Yep. I'm not normally one for harsh punishments, but IMO acts which knowingly undermine the integrity of the justice system, and especially using the state as an unwitting tool to punish innocent people, should be offences treated extremely harshly as they're pretty much attacks on the foundations of "society" itself. And this was a very premeditated conspiracy to pervert the course of justice on a gross scale, and they did so numerous times

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 (1) deter crime by threatening punishment and (2) give the rest of the society confidence that "crime doesn't pay" - because a system that has higher intrinsic trust and follows rules invariably outperforms ones that don't economically and often militarily. Yes part of such a successful system is graded treatment for people who have a better chance of rehabilitation as such folks are much more useful in society and tempering of justice contextually.

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. These are all important tasks and they should be delivered through other parts of the government that are focused on these missions. It is perfectly fine for different arms of a government to have seemingly contradictory missions and these need not be aligned like how audit/controls and commercial functions are not necessarily aligned.

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

Like an attorney getting a speeding ticket, sometimes you have to rub a high-level official's face in some dirt to humble them and change institutional policy.

America has weird leadership fetishes. Captains are supposed to go down with the ship but in times of crisis the President abandons us all to run away on his.

America has weird leadership fetishes. Captains are supposed to go down with the ship but in times of crisis the President abandons us all to run away on his.

That’s… not that weird when you think about it. The ‘Going down with the ship’ cliche exists because the ship and crew are main responsibility of the Captain. His responsibility and power do not extend Nation-wide. In a time of crises the last thing you need is your head of state throwing their life away, because then you also have to worry about matters of succession on top of the pre-existing crisis.

Societies expect that people who violate laws to endure some amount of reciprocal suckage to balance the suckage they inflicted in their violations. That is called justice.

Prisons, generally, suck.

Are prisons good schools or preventers of recidivism? Some say yes, some say no. But most agree that they suck.

I cannot speak for the remainder of HN but my read is that prisons are effective at delivering suckage--sometimes more or less than intended, which you can call a miscarriage of justice.

here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work

I don't know who has argued that, HN is a community of people all with different views. That's a big part of why I am here!

I think the current crime rate in El Salvador, which is now supposedly lower than in the US, is a pretty clear illustration that prisons do work. Of course, there are also a lot of negatives and injustices with mass imprisonment, but it sure looks like it works to reduce crime.

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.

prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... for poor people

rich people on the other hand

They don't deter crimes like theft and gang as much as actual thriving wages and possibly for advancement do. But I reckon they might deter crimes such as falsifying evidence or burying hundreds of people in a mass grave behind your work building, if the people doing those crimes actually did go to jail. Wage theft is another crime we should try jails for, those are not people struggling to make ends meet.

I guess there are two aspects to prison: the first is as you said, a deterent, an agent of rehabilitation, a place of punishment, etc - the ideal form. Questionable, but ultimately something a lot of people could agree to. Then, there is really-existing-prison, which is a place of misery for the people who, almost entirely due to structural reasons, get railroaded repeatedly into its embrace.

So even prison abolitionists are often rather sanguine about imprisoning people like CEOs and high level officials who, despite being absolutely manifestly not railroaded, who have the structure covering from them at every turn, and end up both committing and being convicted as criminals.

I don't think this is necessarily contradictory: you can be fine with the idea of some kind of prison while also recognizing that the current system is a rather pointless and dysfunctional form of sadism that has no relation to any practical or ethical goal.

Yes prison does deter white collar crime. Petty crime probably not but this kind of shit absolutely.

Who is this "we"? HN is not a monoculture; beliefs differ.

But I think it's more nuanced than that. I don't think it's hypocritical to believe that some crimes are better handled with mental health care or drug treatment programs than prison, while also believing that people who knowingly send people to jail under false pretenses should themselves spend some time there.

Also consider that sometimes people think that others should be punished. If my neighbor goes to jail because they like cocaine, and just had some around the house (and weren't dealing), I don't think I'm going to sit back and be all like, "wow, that person had it coming, glad they're getting punished for ::gasp:: having some powdery substance at home, the horror". But if my neighbor goes to jail for murdering my other neighbor, I'm probably fine thinking that a murderer deserves some sort of punishment for what they did.

Some users say those things, but they may be different users than the ones saying CEOs (etc.) should go to jail when they commit crimes. And/or it could be that, despite the idea that prisons don't work, if you're going to punish one set of "criminals" then we ought to apply the penalties evenly... especially since the crimes committed by CEOs/HLOs are often more harmful overall.

Ironically, the threat of prison might be much more effective if white collar types expected to be punished more regularly than they are. Economically, people who wind up incarcerated are often[1] on the low end of the income scale. That is, people who may feel they have little to lose by committing crimes because their standard of living isn't great to begin with. [2]

If these CEOs/HLOs felt there was a good chance they'd end up not only ruining their career but actually going to jail ... they might feel they have too much to lose to commit the crimes in the first place.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html [2] I'm not suggesting that the standard of living in prison is comparable to being free, even if you are actually dirt poor. But if you've been broke or poor, and you have no expectation of that changing, you might understand why someone might take risks.

I'm curious, where are you seeing this? At least four people are dead and hundreds had their lives ruined in the aftermath. I'm struggling to think of a crime with a similar number of victims that has been posted here and people have been sympathetic towards the perpetrators. There was that Hans Reiser message that was posted recently and I saw a good number of comments saying that he was an unrepentant psychopath who deserves to be in jail. And he "only" killed one person. I see people calling for reform and rehabilitation for things like drug possession, but never for crimes of this magnitude.

I think because both things can be correct. Prison is a deterrent to people who participate in society to a high level, but not to those who fundamentally reject society as they are at the bottom of the pyramid.

There are different people on HN with differing views.

I, for one, would never claim that "prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate" without any qualifiers. Maybe some specific systems have some problems, but that's a very different thing than "prisons" as a concept.

It’s more nuanced than that, in part because there are two separate issues:

Not all crimes are the same: harsh punishment won’t deter crimes where people think they won’t get caught (e.g. speeding) or where they are not thinking rationally (e.g. drunken fights). In this case, these are lengthily premeditated decisions so deterrence is likely to be effective _if_ they aren’t confident about being able to evade consequences. That’s why it’s so important to have them now because every other white collar criminal is watching and learning.

The other factor is what form the consequences come in. Fines are problematic if they can be treated as a cost of doing business, but even the richest people only have 24 hours in a day. I personally think community service would be better than jail: if nothing else, it’s cheaper and I think these guys would be incredibly motivated to avoid spending their time scraping gum off of park benches.

So change prisons with the emphasis on rehabilitating people where possible instead of punishing for the fuck of it. What does that have to do with sending criminals to "rehabilitation" prisons. And when people of power commit crime they must be first in line for compromising integrity.

In china they have a saying "A punishment milder than death would not sufficiently assuage public indignation"

https://www.tiktok.com/@chinesedemystified/video/71123116513...

I only post this as a fascinating example of how different Western and Chinese perspectives can be. Not that these people would be killed in China, or that it would be justice if they were- but we don't even have this in our vocabulary!

We have "death is too good for him" and the West, at least the US, has no shortage of bloodthirsty Calvinist Predestination believers who love to imagine people receiving punishment.

I doubt they would have been executed in this case but for heinous corporate crime China doesn't hesitate to apply the death penalty to executives: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8375638.stm

100% Agree...prison time, public excoriation and significant financial penalties.

"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 underlying malfeasance yet to be discovered.

"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).

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

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.

its [sic] up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity

Sounds like he was using a different sense of the term "integrity" than I was.

Figuratively, like integrity of a physical barrier, to the (claimed) attack of this other person.

His testimony is infuriating. Every question answered quickfire and monosyllabicly, trying to shut it down. Exactly the mindset that led to this giant fubar in the first place.

This is actually how the Manson family murders started!

They first injured Gary Hinman trying to get money from him- before the Tate murders. While he was injured they spent days first injuring him, and then debating how to keep him from going to the police for two days before he died.

Is there a chart of the rationality over time?

I found that interesting as well. It shifts the blame away from software and a cover up by Fujitsu to more of a perception/reputation/political cover up by the Post Office.

Fujitsu still has some blame, but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that? If I gave a written statement to a police officer, is it my responsibility to follow up and make sure they didn't edit my statement? Of course... if I found out, it is my responsibility to raise a flag, but I should be able to trust agents of the courts to not alter evidence.

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.

If it was the Post Office editing Fujitsu's statements, who better than Fujitsu staff to confirm as a trial witness what was in the original pre-edited statements?

I'm not sure whether the same Fujitsu people who wrote the witness statements were then questioned in a court room.

but if their statements were being modified by the post office, who's responsibility is it to review that?

From what I can tell from the inquiry testimony, the witness statements weren't exactly modified by the PO; they were effectively drafted by the PO's legal team. The lawyers produced pro-forma template statements, such that witnesses only had to fill in the blanks for names, dates and so on.

Some witnesses balked at some of the language used in the template, e.g. words to the effect of "I believe the Horizon system was working completely correctly". In response, the legal team amended the template.

The evidence produced to the inquiry can be viewed here:

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/

The inquiry has a youtube channel, where videos of the public hearings can be found:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg

For what it's worth, I've never given a statement to police that was in my own words. In every case, the police interviewer led me through my testimony by asking a series of questions, and writing down my answer (in his own words).

It's not the first time I see news about people committing hideous crimes just to cover up some mild offense. It's always surprising, and always feels absurd and impossible, but it just keeps happening.

I guess just like comedy and bad suspense movies, crimes always escalate.

Right, like the ppl who murder their partner rather than admit to cheating on them or being way in debt or whatever... So messed up :(

There are also less extreme examples:

during a school trip with overnight stays, 2 of the teenage girls went out in the evening, even though it was forbidden. It was noticed after a while, so the teacher went looking for them. Just as he went out, they were about to come back(not too late). But they saw the teacher coming out - and hid themself, to not get in trouble in this moment. And this is of course when the real trouble started, because now the search started for real, with informing police about missing female students, big search etc.

Coming out right at the beginning would have meant been giving a warning ... but the hiding because of fear for the trouble made the trouble very big and got them close to being expelled. And anger from the others, because from then, everything was less fun with the teachers ..

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.

when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software?

There are a lot of programmers who seem to think it would be a horrific miscarriage of justice for somebody to be held responsible for the behavior of their own computer programs.

How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software?

A massive contract for the entire postal service of which a number of government managers? On top of which Fujitsu provides software for a huge swath of other UK government agencies like NHS?

So not only are they protecting a huge contract, but they were also covering up the fact that they lied and people ended up going to jail, committing suicide, etc. Aside from the criminal and civil liabilities - that would generate substantial political outrage and is the sort of thing that would shed a lot of unwanted light on the contracts, how they were selected, etc. Light nobody wanted.

This literally caused deaths - people committed suicide because of the shame and debt and utter destruction of their careers.

travesty of justice doesn't begin to describe it. there must be something else wrong besides just the software? how could the justice department just blindly trust the software accounting without any other evidence.

Did you read the article? It was not justice department (aka Crown Prosecutor) prosecuting those people.

In UK private prosecution for crimes is possible. Probably a major reason for this kind of bullshit goes on.

Wait, "private" meaning a non-government entity such as a corporation can prosecute someone, without any involvement of the public justice system, and send people to jail? I assume not just any private entity is empowered to do this, but still... Wow, it's bad enough here in the US that we have a private prison system, but that really takes the cake.

Yes. Really weird.

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

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions

to me, there nothing really wrong with the concept of private prosecutions

whats happened here is a total fuck up of justice, with many many people lying

and the fact people/ judges have believed computer printouts as fact - ffs

I assume not just any private entity is empowered to do this

Anyone can bring a private prosecution.

can prosecute someone, without any involvement of the public justice system

No, it goes through the same public justice system, it’s just that the prosecution case is made by a private person or entity rather than the Crown Prosecution Service. It’s “private” in the sense that most civil suites are private. More info here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecuti...

You are misunderstanding how much of a travesty this is.

No government organisation (typically the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales) was involved in bringing these prosecutions.

The Post Office itself was legislatively empowered to bring private prosecutions of their employees to the state courts of England.

The whole thing is insane.

Reminds me of private prosecutions here in Canada. Is it similar or does the postal office have specific powers that go even beyond that?

Anyone can bring a private prosecution in the UK and I don't believe the Post Office has any specific additional powers in this regard.

Institutionally empowered would have been a better phrase.

While the PO doesn't have specific legislative powers to bring private prosecutions, they did have a significant amount of institutional holdover from when is was a public body.

Specifically, a close working relationship with the police and other bodies with statutory powers that went far beyond any relationship a privately owned body should have. E.g. they were given direct access to the Police National Computer System.

There are lots of wrongful convictions here in the US. Some even have DNA edivence clearing them and proving another committing the crime, and the Prosecution will fight that it does not matter, as long as 12 people thought they were guilty, then they are.

"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.

Horizons was based on a failed benefits system and it was widely known that the quality of the software team was not good. IIRC it didn't even use ACID transactions, so glitches and power outages could cause big problems. What sort of company would put their Z team on a multi-billion pound contract?

Every company that wants to succeed in the bodyshop world. Government contracting is broken in the Anglosphere. Parties contracting out software tend to do it because they cannot manage the project themselves, but they can pay a lot of attention to the financials. So you need to cut costs and just meet the delivery bar that the customer tests for, not actually exceed expectations. You're not going to get credit for the next one.

Government procurement trends towards broken in most countries.

You start out with a nice and clean set of rules, easy to validate. Stuff like "make sure the c-suite aren't relatives of the government officials making the decision".

Time goes by, something goes wrong. Press has a field day. Politicians get embarrassed and add a rule to ensure they can't be embarrassed that way again.

For example, maybe the company chosen was in a dire financial situation, and goes bankrupt, leaving the government up the creek without a paddle. The politicians get embarrassed and add a rule to the procurement process that requires the company getting the contract must demonstrate that they are a going concern.

Over time, what started as a neat and clean system, ends up with the most convoluted and complicated sets of checks and balances known to man. Purchasing decisions that used to take a week, now take 6 months+, and require a significant outlay from the companies that are in the running.

What you end up with is that very few companies can actually compete in the space, few of them have the financial resources to be able to make the kinds of outlay involved, nor take that kind of bet.

The companies that remain in the field are those with the most skill at navigating through the ever changing government procurement processes, and deliver just enough of a solution to satisfy the government, without causing drama.

You can practically guarantee this Fujitsu drama is going to cause yet more rules to be added to the procurement process, because politicians won't want to be embarrassed this way again.

This is almost identical to the way a lot of software development works. So much organic growth. Something that started out completely sane, becomes a near impenetrable mess that practically guarantees bugs. We find edge cases and we fix them. We need to add extra functionality, so we just find a place that looks reasonably logical for it to go. Over and over, until "Wait, what....?" becomes the background sound of the office.

At least in software, we can more easily reach a consensus that it's time to refactor, or completely gut and replace what has gone before. It often hurts us to a sufficient degree that we're motivated to do so.

With governments, all the incentives are missing on the very people that need to be incentivised for it to be fixed. They don't want to have their name against a big re-do of the procurement process, and have it drop something that would have stopped the next disaster. Those are the kinds of things that opponents in an election will jump all over and tout as an example of why you're unfit to serve.

The "A" team is the Sales Support team. Once the deal has been reeled in and the contract is signed, that's a sale, and the team moves on, to be replaced with whatever can be cobbled together.

What sort of company would put their Z team on a multi-billion pound contract?

A company that stands to make significantly larger profits by doing so.

Why pay $$$ on engineers when you can pay $ engineers, and still get a product you can ship to the customer that works to a sufficient degree to satisfy the purchaser?

talking about a "moral obligation" usually means there's no legal obligation, so people don't start down that route until they've exhausted all other obligations.

unfortunately, a moral obligation is about the least powerful type of obligation there is.

I suspect that Fujitsu (the company, not the EU CEO) won't be coughing up any cash until lawyers have picked over the contracts and determined that the company is liable.

Apart from anything else, this is a diplomatic issue: the Japanese ambassador to the UK make representations to the responsible minister, threatening serious diplomatic consequences if Fujitsu kept being criticized.

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)

Private Eye have been covering it continuously since Computer Weekly broke the original story.

The Eye, still the most trustworthy source in the UK. It honestly feels like you are doing society a great service every time you grab a copy.

Yes, that's mentioned in a number of the HN threads listed above.

If anyone finds an interesting thread I missed, please reply so I can add it!

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.

Take a vacation one of these days, Dan. I think you might have earned it.

For the record, here is a submission (and comment) by me:

Computer Says 'Guilty' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392724 - June 2021 (1 comment)

It's interesting to read through these chronologically.

Thank you very much for compiling this list!

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

Seems like the senior Post Office staff purposely "perverted the course of justice" here.

Doesn't that mean they should be facing criminal charges?

Yes but it gets very awkward very quickly when you realise it’s the government who own and have responsibility for the Post Office. Why stop at the Post Office directors?

And who runs the Crown Prosecution Service? Ah yes, the government.

Why stop at the Post Office directors?

Because the principal and agent aren't the same thing. If an agent commits a crime without the knowledge of the principal, then only the agent should have criminal liability.

Is that how English law works, or is that your moral opinion?

IANAL so genuinely curious

IANAL also; but I don't believe English law works like that. The actions your agent performs while acting under your instructions are, on the face of it, your actions. That doesn't protect your agent from liability, but you may have to defend allegations that you were e.g. recklessly negligent.

You forgot about the oversight responsibilities, though. Just because you delegate work to an agent doesn't automatically mean that you are not responsible for the consequences of any action of the agent. If what you say was true not a single company ever would be successfully prosecuted because companies don't do anything on their own, all their actions are through their agents.

The prosecutions were mostly conducted privately by the PO itself, not the CPS. That’s a power the PO should surely be stripped of.

I’m aware. I was alluding that the CPS would be involved in any criminal cases against the PO.

How material were the post offices “overbooking” of profits by false sales registered via this bug ? How plausible is it that in-fact the internal narrative was that the post office was wildly more profitable than it was, but that they just need to crack down on this minor theft problem that they have via prosecutions while at the same time padding their figures a bit via postmasters money ?

It's worse than that. Post Office investigators got performance-related bonuses for every successful prosecution. They were chomping at the bit to prosecute anyone who showed the slightest discrepancy, and all their Christmases came at once after Horizon was installed.

Moral hazard, cobra effect, if all you have is a hammer, etc.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/10/post-office-exec...

To be fair, Sewell (Fujitsu security team manager) was asked about these bonuses, and denied that they related to prosecutions; they were just for doing their job well.

To be unfair, the job they were tasked with was providing evidence to support the prosecutions. And Sewell was a strikingly unconvincing witness; "It was 2008. I don't remember." Apparently he remembered almost nothing that might have a bearing on the inquiry.

In this case I was talking about the Post Office investigators, not Fujitsu, although it's also very depressing about the Fujitsu side of things.

From the article:

Mr Thomas, of the Post Office security team, told the inquiry there were “bonus objectives”, including a 40 per cent “loss recovery objective”, available to his team.

Asked if that influenced his behaviour as an investigator, he said: “I’d probably be lying if I said no because… it was part of the business, the culture of the business of recoveries or even under the terms of a postmaster’s contract with the contracts manager.”

In an email sent by Mr Thomas in 2021 to Nick Read, the Post Office’s chief executive, and which was disclosed to the inquiry, he wrote: “My yearly objectives that were bonus worthy at the time were based on numbers of successful prosecutions and recovery amounts of money to the business.”

He also discussed “a proceeds of crime unit within Post Office Ltd that ensured some of these individuals lost their homes and families”.

Mr Thomas was the lead investigator in the case of sub-postmaster Julian Wilson, who was convicted of false accounting and died of cancer five years before his conviction was overturned.

Mr Thomas did not include any of the problems Mr Wilson had reported with the Horizon system when writing his report after interviewing him in 2008. Years later, Mr Thomas told a colleague he was “pleased” to have his hands on documents relating to Mr Wilson’s case because he wanted to prove there was “no ‘Case for the Justice of Thieving Subposters’” and that they “were all crooks”.

I haven't seen that session. I guess I'll dig it out and watch.

Jesus Christ I didn't know that. Wow.

Things still going on right now:

Prosecutions are still going on but are being led by the Crown Prosecution Service (vs. the post office).

Fujitsu are continuing to proving the CPS / post office with data that they have been doing for years (and possibly still providing witness statements, I dunno).

Subpostmasters still complain about bugs in the horizon software causing balance errors.

Subpostmasters still get fined and have to pay the Post Office ( automatically deducted from their salary) for any shortfalls that occur.

This issue has been public knowledge for years. How is this possible!?

The contract to be an SPM makes you liable for all losses, no matter how they are caused, which includes blatant faults of the accounting/ePOS software. It's the ultimate case of moral hazard. Why fix the broken software if it's only some other sucker who's on the hook for it?

I taught in a private school for a while. In England and Wales the law says that your employment “contract” is simply the verbal, written, or implied agreement to work there and the document enumerating the details — the written statement of employment particulars which is basically the thing you or I would call “the contract” — doesn’t have to be supplied until up to two months after you’ve started work.

My employment particulars came the day of the two month deadline. They included a clause that said that the school had the final say on any claim brought by a pupil or their family against me for loss or damage and that any compensation would automatically be deducted from my salary. Unsurprisingly, I did not agree to this clause and did not sign the document! The school also refused to negotiate and I worked there for two years in a kind of contract limbo.

I’ve gone back to being a SWE now. I was lucky to not be beholden to one industry like my fellow teachers were. I can completely see how a sub-postmaster, without a fallback career, can get cornered into accepting some ludicrously unfair terms.

That is pretty awful, and although it's legal to argue over contract terms, including the employer being completely obstinate and your only option being not to agree, you were right not to back down and accept such a one-sided negotiation.

In the case of SPMs, as the Post Office holds all the cards, they can kick out anyone not willing to accept the unfair contract... like the Mr Bates at the centre of it all, who lost his position as SPM after standing his ground and refusing to accept liability for blatantly false losses attributed to his branch by the Horizon software. Not every SPM was lucky enough to be in the same position as him.

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 another government project, a disaster, but that's apparently nothing really unusual.

The minor villains are the members of the lynch mob. Most were probably ignorant of the facts and so, filled with righteous indignation they did whatever was necessary to make sure that the evil thieves got theirs.

How do you make something like this right? I don't think you can. Shit happens. The villains will keep their heads down for a while, and then like much of politics, will carry on because it seems that there are no consequences anymore.

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.

It seems they shirked any responsibility to the actual governance of the realm decades ago.

How do you make something like this right?

You can't make it fully right, since you can't give people back the time they spent wrongfully imprisoned. But you can at least throw a truckload of cash at them to make things a little less awful.

But yeah... these people will never get their lives back, and it will never be right. This is mainly why I am against capital punishment. Even if we do believe we should have the right to say who lives and who dies (I'm not convinced of that, but many people are), we do not have the ability to say with any certainty that anyone is actually guilty. While the state can later recognize a mistake and let someone out of prison, they can't bring someone back who they executed.

How do you make something like this right?

The UK government reckon it takes about £600,000 each

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66843548

In England and Wales perverting the course of justice carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. IMHO this would be appropriate for the lawyers who rewrote those witness statements.

witness statements are frequently collaboratively written/edited and then signed by the witness...

I don't think collaboration or editing is in itself a crime - the crime is to sign a statement which you know to be untrue or deceiving.

But it seems pretty obvious these lawyers were covering up for their customers. That would fall under being fraudulent, no?

The lawyers produced "template" statements, that witnesses were supposed to complete by filling in the blanks. These templates included various forms of words that they wanted included, e.g. to avoid having to prove in court, for each case, that the Horizon software was behaving correctly. I don't think that amounts to "covering up" - after all, these lawyers were paid advocates for their client, the Post Office.

The real covering-up was the PO lawyers' failure to hand over to the defence evidence that might support the defence case. That's criminal (perverting the course of justice), and also, in the words of the appeal court judge, "an affront to justice".

The real question is who is this happening to now?

Its like you go to a prison and everyone says "I'm innocent" and the officer sarcastically dismisses them saying "you and everyone else", the irony being..... that's plausible?

This is kind of the idea behind the innocence project. I'm not sure if they have a certain focus but they work on cases of people falsely accused.

More than plausible; it's happening again right now within the UK justice system itself - https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk

given how much a prior conviction makes employment difficult here in the US, how would you quantify financial impact not just of the time served, but also the reputational impact it has on your income.

Presumably their record would also get expunged? Not sure how that works in the UK though.

you pick a really big number, and 10x it. it's all part of the negotiating. let a jury decide the final number. some people will tell you some formula about salary at the time, calculating anticipated increases in salary of that time, blah blah. screw a bunch of that. make it hurt.

however, isn't this a UK issue?

"...witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court were then edited by the Post Office..."

I hope there is serious jail time and fines for the persons that did this. Bonkers.

Or off a tall building.

I would think re-writing witness statements is a crime.

I think it was more than 'bugs'. The whole architectural design was inadequate. See Computerphile video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJm9ZYqL10

(C++ programmer, but not an expert of distributed systems - would be interested to hear from someone that is)

Reconciling and accounting isn't difficult.

Is the intent accuracy? Was money a motive?

I don't know the full story but cooking the books is how you skim.

And once you're dirty, in order to come clean you need to expose everything.

The intent was to keep their chummy contract with government going and keep riding the gravy train, no matter how shit the software was.

So far, I haven't seen evidence of anyone at Fujitsu inserting fake records in order to enrich the company - FYI the contract was such that the government took basically no risk, Fujitsu fronted the money to pay for Horizon's development, and in return Fujitsu gets a cut of all transactions. All they need to do is keep the sweet deal going.

What I have seen evidence of is them clearly detecting bugs, and inserting fake records to make the numbers reconcile, but still being so thick that their support staff didn't notice the fake numbers didn't add up either.

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html

Their motive appears to keep the corporate gravy train going, so yes it's personal enrichment, and to fudge the numbers on the sly so nobody questions Fujitsu's competence to run their system... but not cook the books directly.

Then of course the Post Office would prosecute the SPMs for discrepencies hallucinated by Fujitsu's broken accounting software, and not be curious or ask questions of Fujitsu, because then the Post Office bosses wouldn't get their performance-based bonuses.

There's also straight up incompetence:

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/

Chambers admitted to the Inquiry that despite being told the discrepancies had occurred on various occasions at the branch throughout the year, she only looked at the system information behind the most recent discrepancy. She also didn’t check to see if something similar had been reported by any other branch. Her “investigation”, from assignation to conclusion, took one hour sixteen minutes.

Chambers conceded that she didn’t know if it was an unknown system error was affecting the branch, and seemed to accept that her stark conclusion in 2013: “No fault in product” and “user” error, was misleading. She added:

“I don’t think I handled it terribly well. I was frustrated by it and I think that shows… because, you know, it really looked like there was a genuine problem… [but]… There was no sign of it.”

In summary, ten years ago, Anne Chambers appears not to have considered the possibility of unknown system problems, or prompted an investigation more advanced than what she could achieve within the limits of her knowledge and ability. Instead, after a quick squizz at a limited dataset she concluded there was no obvious problem, which meant there was no problem and the cause of the discrepancy was the Subpostmaster.

this is crazy

cant help but consider that fujitsu is an SI that competes with infosys and this really undermines fujitsu in the minds of british tac payers...

The UK government took Fujitsu off their "preferred vendors" list. But they're not allowed, by law, to exclude a company completely from new contracts.

They tried to cancel another Fujitsu contract, but Fujitsu took them to court and won, so the government have to keep accepting their shit service.

Also, products named Horizon are problematic.

? I don’t follow. Problematic is a pretty vague descriptor. What’s wrong with the name?

I've been listening to this podcast about it. Very messed up how these sub-postmasters were treated.

https://open.spotify.com/show/6BL7LWzXRdmwa0JVXOChQL?si=51p1...

Is this a case where the software just had bugs in it like most production software that are patched with new releases that introduce new bugs and as such is a useful scape goat for the defense and the media has no idea what they are talking about and decided to run with it? Or is it the bugs are egregious and clearly responsible for the convictions?

Please note I have no dog in this fight, just generally curious if anyone knows more?

So, when your new software system identifies fraud where none was seen before the onus is really on you to check, recheck and triple-check your results before you start ruining people's lives. Those working on the present crop of AI classifiers should take note because those too can, will and probably already are being used to figure out who to target for surveillance, perform facial matching and will likely be embedded in AI based legal software. We're not that far from 'computer says guilty' and even if it isn't the computer that says so directly all it needs to do is give the wrong kind of person enough cover that they believe they are doing the right thing.

Something very similar happened in the Netherlands with the tax office and I suspect that if and when the IND here gets turned inside out we'll find a lot more of this sort of stuff.

I think software industry should take responsibility for software Bugs, especially that nowa that affect peoples lifes

There are dangerous flaws within the case management software used by the UK justice system itself - https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk

The documentary that accompanied the recent ITV Drama "Mr Bates vs The Post Office" provides a good overview. Listening to the actual people impacted by this is heart breaking.

Someone has put it on YT, also available in the torrent bundle on PB. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHIr5fqfqKs

"We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters. For that we are truly sorry."

Every time some CEO issues an apology i can't help but not take it seriously because it reminds of following scene: https://youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4

What infuriates me is that the courts decided to convict people when there was no evidence of malpractice other than that damn software. What happened to innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt? Where the fucking proof?

Why are judges ignoring the very foundations upon which our justice systems were built?

People who frame others for a crime should be subject to the same sanctions as the crime itself.

The post office edited witness statements to secure prosecutions?

Every single prosecutor needs to be considered for perverting the course of justice.

If bugs of that severity were known from the start, then (taking the most generous interpretation), it was incompetence of the highest degree that the software was released.

TLDR: UK legal system has no legitimacy. The whole thing is just yet another example of the consequences of letting lawyers lie as much as they want without consequences in order to win.

More/related:

Fixing Horizon bugs would have been too costly, Post Office inquiry told

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39039712

Fujitsu is sorry that its software helped send innocent people to prison

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39038263

To an extent, this is basically the norm for most software projects. Often you know there are bugs and issues in a piece of software, but don't consider them enough of a blocker to delay the release date for. That works okay for something like game development where the stakes are very low.

That does not work for a piece of software where people's lives and finances are on the line, especially not when you still accuse people of committing criminal actions knowing full well that it could be the fault of your system's bugs rather than their actions.

Some might question if this 'move fast, break things and ignore bugs that aren't thought to be complete showstoppers' is the right move, but the way they handled it on a business and legal level was definitely the wrong one, and the majority of the problems came from the dodgy actions of the execs and business folks trying to cover things up.