Comment by mrkramer
6 days ago
"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]."
If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...
6 days ago
"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]."
If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...
Every system has bugs, even deployed, high visibility accounting systems. Debian stable, which I personally view as the gold standard for a robust general purpose OS, has hundreds of bugs.
That is not to say that bugs are good. They are bad and should be squashed. But the Horizon failure, IMO, is with the management, that pretended that the system was bug free and, faced with the evidence to the contrary, put the blame on postmasters. My 2c.
If any large system wasn’t constantly logging errors I’d immediately assume there was something wrong with the error logging system. Only trivial software is bug free.
I'd be shocked if any piece of software large enough to qualify as an "accounting system" didn't contain at least hundreds of bugs. We're just not that good at building software. Especially if you consider that the system encompasses all of the dependencies, so you should count bugs in the OS, CPU, any relevant firmware, etc.
So long as the jury understands this, it's all fine.
If you're on trial for doing X and your jury is told by a prosecution witness "mrkramer did X" and under cross they admit that's based on computer records which are often bogus, inconsistent, total nonsense, it doesn't take the world's best defence lawyer to secure an "innocent" verdict. That's not a fun experience, but it probably won't drive you to suicide.
One of the many interlocking failures here is that the Post Office, historically a government function, was allowed to prosecute people.
Suppose I work not for the Post Office (by this point a private company which is just owned in full by the government) but for say, an Asda, next door. I'm the most senior member of staff on weekends, so I have keys, I accept deliveries, all that stuff. Asda's crap computer system says I accepted £25000 of Amazon Gift Cards which it says came on a truck from the depot on Saturday. I never saw them, I deny it, there are no Gift Cards in stock at our store.
Asda can't prosecute me. They could try to sue, but more likely they'd call the police. If the police think I stole these Amazon cards, they give the file to a Crown Prosecutor, who works for the government to prosecute criminals. They don't work for Asda and they're looking at a bunch of "tests" which decide whether it makes sense to prosecute people.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/about-cps/how-we-make-our-decisions
But because the Sub-postmasters worked under contract to the Post Office, it could and did in many cases just prosecute them, it was empowered to do that. That's an obvious mistake, in many of these cases if you show a copper, let alone a CPS lawyer your laughable "case" that although this buggy garbage is often wrong you think there's signs of theft, they'll tell you that you can't imprison people on this basis, piss off.
A worse failure is that Post Office people were allowed to lie to a court about how reliable this information was, and indeed they repeatedly lied in later cases where it's directly about the earlier lying. That's the point where it undoubtedly goes from "Why were supposedly incompetent morons given this important job?" where maybe they're morons or maybe they're liars, to "Lying to a court is wrong, send them to jail".
It's worse than that - in UK law you cannot question the evidence produced by a computer unless you can prove the computer is not operating correctly - it's an inversion of the normal burden of proof.
They've started the process of thinking about if that law makes sense given this case: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/use-of-evid...
It’s only an inversion of the usual burden of proof if you assume that evidence from a computer can only ever be used to aid the prosecution. It can also be used to aid the defense, in which case this presumption makes it harder to convict someone, not easier.
A juror can, and should IMHO, however consider that evidence based entirely upon computer records may potentially be erroneous and therefore unable to secure proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. If I were a juror, I'd default to non-guilty if a case were based entirely upon the results of an algorithm or computerised records because they introduce doubt.
> Asda can't prosecute me.
They can, actually. Anyone in the UK can launch a private prosecution. It's rare because it's expensive and the CPS can (and often do) take over any private prosecution then drop it.
Nevertheless, the power exists and has been intentionally protected by parliament. I think most would agree it needs reform, however.
Unfortunately the "its rare" isnt true. it is more common now than it was back in the horizon days. It also isnt necessarily expensive since you can apply for costs with the default being for it to be paid (unless good reason not to). As such whilst its not an option for the average person who cant afford the upfront cost it is very practical for large businesses especially if they engage in it often and hence can stand up a department for it.
Its one of the offerings from TM-Eye aka one of the "private police forces". https://tm-eye.co.uk/what-we-do/private-prosecutions/
It is an actual example of a two tier justice system since those who can afford the private prosecution skip the queue for the public system but will still normally have the taxpayer pay for it.
There is currently a consultation underway as per below article which, incidentally, mentions a more recent dubious example of private prosecutions which got slapped down.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/oversight-and-re...
This is Technically Correct, which is, I admit, the Best Kind of Correct, but in practical terms it won't happen.
[Edited: Got the Futurama quote wrong, fixed that]
> If you're on trial for doing X and your jury is told by a prosecution witness "mrkramer did X" and under cross they admit that's based on computer records which are often bogus, inconsistent, total nonsense, it doesn't take the world's best defence lawyer to secure an "innocent" verdict. That's not a fun experience, but it probably won't drive you to suicide.
I imagine digital records are involved in nearly every trial at this point. Good luck getting this point admitted by the justice system.
There are plenty of examples, Light Blue Touchpaper talks about this a bunch. You do have a problem that courts will believe technicians very broadly unless somebody competent is cross-examining to highlight where the limits of their evidence are. So your defence will need to hire such an expert and your legal team need to get the judge to understand why everybody is going to listen to nerd stuff for however long when they thought this was a case about, say, theft.
Well not really, no one should be committing suicide due to a buggy system. If you know the details of the case it was widespread but the post office decided to gaslight everyone and put people in debt and prison. That’s what caused this, the bugs were just a catalyst for shitty humans to do shitty things
Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts and quality test the software, reverse engineering it and try to catch the bugs. This wasn't the classic case of financial fraud, this was all about faulty software.
The Post Office management knew about the bugs but didn't want to take the blame for the accounting issues they caused (since it was management that purchased and approved the software some blame would have fallen on them).
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> Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts
Yea and who is responsible for engaging them?
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But it was the decision to gaslight and charge the postmasters with crimes that caused the suicides, not the bugs in the code. If they had just admitted that the accounting issues were due to bugs in the system then I really doubt anyone would have committed suicide.
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Where are you getting the idea that anyone suggested this?
At any rate, it was the persecuted postal workers who committed suicide, not the software developers.
I meant top management is in deep shit if their finical departments run low quality buggy accounting software not the staff. Or in this case post office branches run the buggy software. All in all, decentralized nature of post office system was the thing that drove everything to this madness.
The suicide victims weren't programmers, they were postmasters, who had been falsely accused of fraud by the software.
Damn! That's dark. I should've read the article first, but I did not. Sorry.
I kinda understand the false guilt these postmasters must have felt when they were wrongfully accused. These people should not be dead like that, those who puts them into that living hell should.
Oddly though, the justice of this world usually don't work like that. Usually, it's the people at the lowest level who suffer the worst fate/abuse, simply because they are the most defenseless, while the people "on the top" pets themselves for "resolving" the problem they created.
It's a odd place to mention, but from one of Donald Trump's story (The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge one where he noticed the unnoticed engineer) I've learned it is important that one must actively take what they deserved (recognition in his story, justice in this case), and at least don't be silent when other people is stealing it away. This is "a nasty world", and if you want to make things right, you must "Fight! Fight! Fight!" and never give up.
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This is not at all what happened or what anyone suggested, yikes.