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

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/fujitsu-bugs-that-sent-innocent-people-to-prison-were-known-from-the-start/

by MBCook • 3 years ago

522 270 3 years ago

msie• 3 years ago

All the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail. All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and malpractice.

dougSF70• 3 years ago

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

droopyEyelids2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

plagiarist2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

dylan6042• 3 years ago

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.

bloqs• 3 years ago

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.

arp2423• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

plagiarist2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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?

WalterBright4• 3 years ago

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.

jzb2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

surfingdino2• 3 years ago

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.

sfifs• 3 years ago

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.

sophacles• 3 years ago

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.

cowboysauce• 3 years ago

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.

kelnos10• 3 years ago

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.

shapefrog2• 3 years ago

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

rich people on the other hand

vladgur• 3 years ago

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.

dylan6042• 3 years ago

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?

kelnos10• 3 years ago

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

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

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.

arp2423• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

CoastalCoder3• 3 years ago

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

deepsun2• 3 years ago

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.

taeric• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

shapefrog2• 3 years ago

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

DiggyJohnson• 3 years ago

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

kitd• 3 years ago

Her

ExoticPearTree• 3 years ago

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

qwertox• 3 years ago

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

thinkingemote2• 3 years ago

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.

okokisay• 3 years ago

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.

CoastalCoder3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

She acted just like a person with Christian ideals.

kelnos10• 3 years ago

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.

liveoneggs• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

surfingdino2• 3 years ago

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

worik2• 3 years ago

Bugs are inevitable.

Yes

But accounting software that gets totals wrong is not inevitable

Entirely avoidable

dumbfounder• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

hermitcrab5• 3 years ago

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?

ijhuygft776• 3 years ago

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.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

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.

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

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...

throw72• 3 years ago

"...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.

IronWolve• 3 years ago

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

infamouscow• 3 years ago

Or off a tall building.

CM30• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

"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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

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).

marcosdumay• 3 years ago

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.

amatecha• 3 years ago

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 :(

neilv3• 3 years ago

"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).

droopyEyelids2• 3 years ago

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.

chris_wot2• 3 years ago

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

KennyBlanken• 3 years ago

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.

EasyMark3• 3 years ago

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.

ikidd2• 3 years ago

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.

snickerbockers• 3 years ago

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.

raffraffraff2• 3 years ago

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

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

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/aaJyc

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

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

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

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

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

Instead we have suicides, lives and reputations ruined.

ddalex• 3 years ago

because of EU rules

Citation needed.

LoveMortuus• 3 years ago

People have actually died because of this, yet these still don't take it seriously and take the responsibility for it...

How much longer will they drag this through the dirt, because the families of the deceased can finally have peace?

WalterBright4• 3 years ago

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

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

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?

csan2• 3 years ago

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

tsol• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

nabla92• 3 years ago

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.

kelnos10• 3 years ago

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.

magospietato2• 3 years ago

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.

mardifoufs• 3 years ago

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

dessimus• 3 years ago

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.

JohnFen3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

SuperNinKenDo• 3 years ago

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

alt227• 3 years ago

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

kelnos10• 3 years 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.

thinkingemote2• 3 years ago

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.

jiggawatts• 3 years ago

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

amiga3866• 3 years ago

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?

worik2• 3 years ago

"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

metabagel2• 3 years ago

Clearly, there must have been systemic issues at Fujitsu which allowed the accounting software to fail so spectacularly.

hermitcrab5• 3 years ago

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?

notatoad• 3 years ago

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.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

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.

bjornsing• 3 years ago

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_explore2• 3 years ago

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.

EasyMark3• 3 years ago

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

puzzledobserver2• 3 years ago

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

puzzledobserver2• 3 years ago

"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.

conductr3• 3 years ago

Yes totally but shouldn’t it have been the prosecution that hired forensic accountants in order to, well, prosecute

ikidd2• 3 years ago

terminated their contract

Two days before the report was due to be released.

tjpnz• 3 years ago

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

hermitcrab5• 3 years ago

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?

lazide2• 3 years ago

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?

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

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.

dataangel• 3 years ago

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

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

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.

vlovich1232• 3 years ago

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?

spondyl• 3 years ago

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

pityJuke• 3 years ago

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

csan2• 3 years ago

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

dang3• 3 years ago

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)

hermitcrab5• 3 years ago

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

dang3• 3 years ago

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!

ninjin• 3 years ago

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.

EasyMark3• 3 years ago

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

jacquesm4• 3 years ago

It's interesting to read through these chronologically.

Thank you very much for compiling this list!

qingcharles4• 3 years ago

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

switch0074• 3 years ago

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.

dang3• 3 years ago

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

prof-dr-ir• 3 years ago

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)

hermitcrab5• 3 years ago

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)

pizzafeelsright• 3 years ago

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.

amiga3866• 3 years ago

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.

iovrthoughtthis• 3 years ago

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...

amiga3866• 3 years ago

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.

cannonpr• 3 years ago

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 ?

amiga3866• 3 years ago

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...

buggeryorkshire• 3 years ago

Jesus Christ I didn't know that. Wow.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

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.

cesther• 3 years ago

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

DarkmSparks• 3 years ago

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.

calzone5116• 3 years ago

"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

jacquesm4• 3 years ago

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.

justinclift• 3 years ago

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

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

switch0074• 3 years ago

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.

hackerlight• 3 years ago

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.

asplake• 3 years ago

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

Zuiii• 3 years ago

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?

wonderwonder2• 3 years ago

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?

danjc• 3 years ago

Also, products named Horizon are problematic.

whythre3• 3 years ago

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

iwik2_w• 3 years ago

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

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

The post office edited witness statements to secure prosecutions?

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

pjmlp• 3 years ago

Besides the sad part of destroyed people's lives, this is a good example of how software quality matters to the society and liability is a must.

chernevik• 2 years ago

I don't understand how a lawyer who revised witness testimony is walking around free.

Toss in jail and throw away the key.

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

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