[HN Gopher] Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison wer...
___________________________________________________________________
Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known "from
the start"
Author : MBCook
Score : 246 points
Date : 2024-01-19 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| msie wrote:
| All the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail.
| All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and
| malpractice.
| dougSF70 wrote:
| 100% Agree...prison time, public excoriation and significant
| financial penalties.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| 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!
| jpgvm wrote:
| 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
| plagiarist wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| nothercastle wrote:
| Yes prison does deter white collar crime. Petty crime
| probably not but this kind of shit absolutely.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Ken Lay of Enron.
| jzb wrote:
| 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.
| bloqs wrote:
| 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.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| jstarfish wrote:
| 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.
| whythre wrote:
| >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.
| plagiarist wrote:
| 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.
| FpUser wrote:
| 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.
| whyenot wrote:
| > 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.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 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?
| senderista wrote:
| Kinda like the people who think the Capitol police should
| have just shot all the rioters.
| mulmen wrote:
| Because those people are made of straw. They can only speak
| when you speak for them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| jzb wrote:
| 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.
| xbar wrote:
| 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.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| pasabagi wrote:
| 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.
| surfingdino wrote:
| 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.
| didntcheck wrote:
| 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
| sfifs wrote:
| 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.
| metabagel wrote:
| > 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
| sophacles wrote:
| 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.
| vladgur wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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?
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| 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.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| 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.
| RangerScience wrote:
| 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Your actual principles are demonstrated by how you act when
| nobody is looking.
| smcin wrote:
| 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.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| > 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > 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
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| >So you really should expect true Christians, on average,
| to gradually become better people.
|
| Only if I accept their beliefs as accurate.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| 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.
| labster wrote:
| 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).
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| mylastattempt wrote:
| 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.
| all2 wrote:
| > 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| > 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| > 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.
| deepsun wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| you don't think other groups would have fought for
| survival?
| deepsun wrote:
| Other groups would adapt to their local community, blend
| in, so there would be no need to move out and found
| countries.
| taeric wrote:
| 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.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| 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.
| bedobi wrote:
| > 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
| nihonthrowaway wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| 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.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| 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.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| How is that relevant, other than making him a bit of more a
| hypocrite?
| kitd wrote:
| Her
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Seriously now, with all this information now available,
| shouldn't all the people that lied and rewrote statements be
| prosecuted for perjury?
| qwertox wrote:
| "I'm sorry, I don't remember". But yes, they should and
| probably will be. But just for show.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > 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.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| She acted just like a person with Christian ideals.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Absolutely. Another example: people are routinely sent to jail
| based on highly sensitive field drug tests which have
| significant rates of false positives.
| surfingdino wrote:
| If you want to turn one's life into living hell, it helps to
| ask a priest for help.
| worik wrote:
| > Bugs are inevitable.
|
| Yes
|
| But accounting software that gets totals wrong is not
| inevitable
|
| Entirely avoidable
| dumbfounder wrote:
| 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?????
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| 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.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >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?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| 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...
| throw7 wrote:
| "...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.
| CM30 wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| 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
| orbisvicis wrote:
| "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.
| ldoughty wrote:
| 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.
| jahewson wrote:
| To be clear it's the Post Office that's accused of editing
| Fujitsu's statements.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| neilv wrote:
| "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).
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| 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.
| neilv wrote:
| Is there a chart of the rationality over time?
| WalterBright wrote:
| People who frame others for a crime should be subject to the same
| sanctions as the crime itself.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| 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?
| csan wrote:
| More than plausible; it's happening again right now within the
| UK justice system itself -
| https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk
| tsol wrote:
| 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.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| 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.
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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.
| magospietato wrote:
| 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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.
| jocoda wrote:
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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.
| alt227 wrote:
| >How do you make something like this right?
|
| The UK government reckon it takes about PS600,000 each
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66843548
| thinkingemote wrote:
| 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.
| worik wrote:
| "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
| metabagel wrote:
| Clearly, there must have been systemic issues at Fujitsu which
| allowed the accounting software to fail so spectacularly.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| 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?
| bjornsing wrote:
| 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.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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.
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| 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
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| > "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.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| 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?
| dataangel wrote:
| I think the more important variable is how many subpostmasters
| there are. If there are millions then 700 is impressive.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| 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?
| csan wrote:
| There are dangerous flaws within the case management software
| used by the UK justice system itself -
| https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk
| dang wrote:
| 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
| PS600k 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)
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Private Eye have been covering it continuously since Computer
| Weekly broke the original story.
| dang wrote:
| 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!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| 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)
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| 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...
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