"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.
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.
"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).
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
ICL couldn't beat IBM, but the government were committed to "buying British". That left the government with shit computers and systems. It still didn't help ICL, so in 1981 they faced bankruptcy. Since the government was the biggest user of ICL systems, civil servants persuaded Thatcher that "if ICL went bust, the government would grind to a halt". So ICL was rescued, with the aid of trusted Japanese tech firm Fujitsu. ICL lost its monopoly status, but was deeply embedded in the British state. You know the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Well in the British Government, replace "IBM" with "ICL".
In 1995 the British government decided to automate their social welfare system. "Project Pathway" was a disaster. It got dumped 4 years later, but the Post Office still went ahead and used it, this time calling it "Project Horizon". According to insiders, everybody knew it was a "bag of shit". By now, ICL was fully owned by Fujitsu, who told the Blair government that if they didn’t sign the deal, ICL would collapse. So the deal was signed. And what a mess for all involved.
This isn't an isolated case though. ICL/Fujitsu built another system for the Cabinet Office in No. 10, for highly classified material. It was absolute trash, taking half an our to boot, and Ministers refused to use it. They dumped the system, prompting Fujitsu to sue for breach of contract. But, even as the Cabinet Office was decommissioning it, another branch of government was buying it.
Why? Partly because of EU rules, departments couldn't share their experiences with a given supplier or system. If a department knew that ICL/Fujitsu sucked, it might influence future contracts "and everyone would be sued".
Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.
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?
> "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."
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.
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?
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.
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...)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> "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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 ?
[+] [-] orbisvicis|2 years ago|reply
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|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] neilv|2 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] marcosdumay|2 years ago|reply
I guess just like comedy and bad suspense movies, crimes always escalate.
[+] [-] snickerbockers|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] EasyMark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LoveMortuus|2 years ago|reply
How much longer will they drag this through the dirt, because the families of the deceased can finally have peace?
[+] [-] raffraffraff|2 years ago|reply
Paywalled: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-villain-at-the-heart-...
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/aaJyc
Summary: In the 1960s, the government merged a bunch of companies "at gunpoint", creating behemoths like British Leyland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland) and ICL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite...) that were to compete with international giants.
ICL couldn't beat IBM, but the government were committed to "buying British". That left the government with shit computers and systems. It still didn't help ICL, so in 1981 they faced bankruptcy. Since the government was the biggest user of ICL systems, civil servants persuaded Thatcher that "if ICL went bust, the government would grind to a halt". So ICL was rescued, with the aid of trusted Japanese tech firm Fujitsu. ICL lost its monopoly status, but was deeply embedded in the British state. You know the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Well in the British Government, replace "IBM" with "ICL".
In 1995 the British government decided to automate their social welfare system. "Project Pathway" was a disaster. It got dumped 4 years later, but the Post Office still went ahead and used it, this time calling it "Project Horizon". According to insiders, everybody knew it was a "bag of shit". By now, ICL was fully owned by Fujitsu, who told the Blair government that if they didn’t sign the deal, ICL would collapse. So the deal was signed. And what a mess for all involved.
This isn't an isolated case though. ICL/Fujitsu built another system for the Cabinet Office in No. 10, for highly classified material. It was absolute trash, taking half an our to boot, and Ministers refused to use it. They dumped the system, prompting Fujitsu to sue for breach of contract. But, even as the Cabinet Office was decommissioning it, another branch of government was buying it.
Why? Partly because of EU rules, departments couldn't share their experiences with a given supplier or system. If a department knew that ICL/Fujitsu sucked, it might influence future contracts "and everyone would be sued".
Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.
[+] [-] puzzledobserver|2 years ago|reply
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|2 years ago|reply
Inexcusable.
[+] [-] spondyl|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] hermitcrab|2 years ago|reply
I mean seriously, if you were a criminal, would you go to all the trouble to run a post office for years?
[+] [-] dataangel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingemote|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jiggawatts|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] switch007|2 years ago|reply
It was the recent TV mini series that got this mass attention, which triggered the mass media covering it I believe.
[+] [-] EasyMark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hermitcrab|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prof-dr-ir|2 years ago|reply
Computer Says 'Guilty' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392724 - June 2021 (1 comment)
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
Thank you very much for compiling this list!
[+] [-] qingcharles|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjornsing|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw7|2 years ago|reply
I hope there is serious jail time and fines for the persons that did this. Bonkers.
[+] [-] IronWolve|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] infamouscow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] CM30|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] WalterBright|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] worik|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] notatoad|2 years ago|reply
unfortunately, a moral obligation is about the least powerful type of obligation there is.
[+] [-] metabagel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinclift|2 years ago|reply
Doesn't that mean they should be facing criminal charges?
[+] [-] switch007|2 years ago|reply
And who runs the Crown Prosecution Service? Ah yes, the government.
[+] [-] zoklet-enjoyer|2 years ago|reply
https://open.spotify.com/show/6BL7LWzXRdmwa0JVXOChQL?si=51p1...
[+] [-] csan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calzone5116|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] jocoda|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kelnos|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] alt227|2 years ago|reply
The UK government reckon it takes about £600,000 each
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66843548
[+] [-] akira2501|2 years ago|reply
If only there was a single person ensconced with supreme authority and a duty to protect the realm around.
[+] [-] hermitcrab|2 years ago|reply
(C++ programmer, but not an expert of distributed systems - would be interested to hear from someone that is)
[+] [-] tomcar288|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magospietato|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dessimus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|2 years ago|reply
In UK private prosecution for crimes is possible. Probably a major reason for this kind of bullshit goes on.
[+] [-] wonderwonder|2 years ago|reply
Please note I have no dog in this fight, just generally curious if anyone knows more?
[+] [-] cannonpr|2 years ago|reply