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

flop_leash_973@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 538 points – Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known “from the start”
arstechnica.com

A lot of people in the UK prosecutors offices and post office management should be going to prison.

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This has been going on for twenty-five years. The system was originally rolled out in 1999. I've been hearing stuff about this case off and on for about a decade now.

Why the living fuck isn't everyone involved with every step of this process behind bars.

The wildest shit is it's not even Fujitsu to blame! It's some fucking idiots in charge at Royal Mail who literally fraudulently edited statements from Fujitsu to claim that there were no errors and the system was working.

They used these false statements as justification to prosecute, imprison, and fine hundreds of Postal Employees.

What a waste of time, money, resources, and human fucking life.

Fujitsu aren't blameless, not at all. They were going into user's accounts and fiddling figures, correcting the errors the software made.

Then when a sub-postmaster went to their office and saw this, they retaliated by setting his account to debit and erased records of him being there. It may well be that many of the victims were targeted for complaining that the system was flawed.

What infuriates me is that the only reason anyone gave a shit is because ITV made a (frankly, okayish) drama about the scandal. Now, politicians are ripping the law apart to save face, alongside trying to point fingers away from those responsible. Jail time is absolutely needed. People have had their entire careers ruined by this, and while they all deserve a huge payout, no amount of money will fix the damage caused.

Why the living fuck isn't everyone involved with every step of this process behind bars.

Im so confused. They’ve been trying to arrest as many QA people as possible 😎

Yeah what's the charges for destruction of evidence? This should absolutely be treated as a criminal matter

Did you miss that it was only poor People that were imprisoned?

Weren't there also Fujitsu employees in the Braknell office also remote connecting to Horizon terminals and post offices and fucking with the numbers in there?

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That goes back to 1999, when the Horizon software system was installed in post offices by Fujitsu subsidiary International Computers Limited. From 1999 to 2015, Fujitsu's faulty accounting software aided in the prosecution and conviction of more than 900 sub-postmasters and postmistresses who were accused of theft or fraud when the software wrongly made it appear that money was missing from their branches.

During the prosecutions, courts hearing cases against postal employees "were not told of 29 bugs identified as early as 1999 in the system it built," The Guardian wrote in a summary of Patterson's testimony today. The article said:

When bugs were acknowledged, 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.

Thanks, I was wondering what this was

That really sounds like those that edited those testimonies and those that ordered the edits should be going to prison because holy shit that's bad

You could try out this crazy new thing called reading the article

Far too many writers turn two sentences of information into two pages of waffle.

Sure, and that's what I would have done next if someone didn't extract the key detail I was looking for

When a story is relevant to me I'll still go and read the article. Otherwise I can get the details I need, as well as extra context, from the comment sections

Proprietary software makers: our software is more secure than open source because the public can't go looking for bugs to exploit.

Proprietary software:

It's what happens when you have a 'justice' system which is biased in favour of people with more money to spend on lawyers - literally pay to win. It's unthinkable that in such a democratic society our justice system could still be this way, biased against poor people.

Does the UK not have habeus corpus?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Right from the very start of deployment of the system, there were bugs and errors and defects, which were well-known to all parties," said Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu's European division.

During the prosecutions, courts hearing cases against postal employees "were not told of 29 bugs identified as early as 1999 in the system it built," The Guardian wrote in a summary of Patterson's testimony today.

Asked by the lead counsel of the public inquiry, Jason Beer KC, whether he agreed that this was shameful, Patterson, who has worked at the company for 14 years, said: "That would be one word I would use.

A Financial Times article said that the public inquiry "heard in December last year that the Post Office's lawyers had rewritten Fujitsu witness statements."

Earlier this week, Patterson told UK Parliament members that "Fujitsu would like to apologize for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice.

Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake, the MP for Thirsk and Malton, told the BBC that his "number one priority" is to "try and get compensation and get answers for people."

The original article contains 736 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Those are going to be some hefty settlement. Illegal termination, back pay, effects on future salary due to this.

If this becomes a right and just world? Yes. In reality this has been a known thing for decades and its still going on because....thats the world we live in.

Some people will get a slap on the wrist, some will get promotions, and the people who are wrongly convicted will be handed a few bucks and told to watch their ass.

This is the UK, not the US. There will be little to no fallout from this, and the victims will be threatened with consequences for speaking out.

In the us basically nothing would happen either lol

There would be a class action lawsuit where lawyers take two thirds of the settlement and those affected would get enough for a fancy Starbucks coffee.

Class action lawsuits usually give about a third to the lawyers, and the rest is divided between the plaintiffs, so most of them get 10 or 20 bucks.

And, of course, they would be shamed for how they spent it and told thats why people are poor.

You think so? Usually judges don't like being lied to. So if it is now clear that the company willfully lied, they might take a different stance.

Especially because the effects are so long term detrimental to the persons and they kept it up for so long.