Fujitsu & Royal Mail Scandal / Disaster

[tkitch]

 

Summary

 

In 1996 Fujitsu won a contract to computerize some amount of mail handling in the Royal Mail system.  Since 1999 well over 1000 post masters have been fired / sued / charged, and a few sent to jail for various "crimes" in not doing their jobs.  Turns out that the Fujitsu Software was fucking up the whole time, and was just wrong about basically all of those metrics.

 

Fujitsu has pledged to help pay "some" of the 1 BILLION UKP suit that has come out of this.  

 

Quotes

Quote

Fujitsu 'truly sorry' for role in Post Office prosecutions

The firm which powered the faulty Horizon computer system for the Post Office has admitted it knew there were “bugs and errors”.

Fujitsu executive Paul Patterson said it provided evidence that helped in the prosecutions of sub postmasters for which “we are truly sorry”.

He told the Business and Trade Committee he was “personally appalled” by what had been heard in the inquiry so far, and the firm today was now “quite different to the company in the early 2000s”.

 

My thoughts

 

I think Fujitsu should be on the hook for the bulk of that 1 Billion UKP settlement.  Why?  Their software was giving bad numbers for 25 years+ and getting people fired, and even sent to jail.  (And all the social / legal / political rammifications after that.)

There's no way they "just" realized this in the last year or two that it was that broken.  And if by some insane circumstances, that was actually the case?  Then there's a boatload of incompetence happening around their company.

 

 

Sources

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67985374

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67993906  (Video)

[RokinAmerica]

I also would include the ineptitude of the prosecution and its experts. How did they send people to jail for something like this without vetting the software used to prosecute in the first place?

[CarlBar]

16 minutes ago, tkitch said:

 

Summary

 

In 1996 Fujitsu won a contract to computerize some amount of mail handling in the Royal Mail system.  Since 1999 well over 1000 post masters have been fired / sued / charged, and a few sent to jail for various "crimes" in not doing their jobs.  Turns out that the Fujitsu Software was fucking up the whole time, and was just wrong about basically all of those metrics.

 

Fujitsu has pledged to help pay "some" of the 1 BILLION UKP suit that has come out of this.  

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

 

I think Fujitsu should be on the hook for the bulk of that 1 Billion UKP settlement.  Why?  Their software was giving bad numbers for 25 years+ and getting people fired, and even sent to jail.  (And all the social / legal / political rammifications after that.)

There's no way they "just" realized this in the last year or two that it was that broken.  And if by some insane circumstances, that was actually the case?  Then there's a boatload of incompetence happening around their company.

 

 

Sources

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67985374

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67993906  (Video)

 

The scandal broke a number of years ago, this is just the UK government finally moving on compensation. It predates the pandemic in first breaking as a story and AFAIK and was only discovered when someone with independent hard records that were stronger in provenance was able to prove the software wrong, thats when everyone started looking into it.

 

It';s just taken this long for the UK government to finally get through the bureaucracy of acting on the findings of the investigation into the mess that occurred.

 

6 minutes ago, RokinAmerica said:

I also would include the ineptitude of the prosecution and its experts. How did they send people to jail for something like this without vetting the software used to prosecute in the first place?

 

This is a big part of why the government is partially footing the bill. There where a lot of mistakes made all along the line that amounted to trusting the software was right no matter what.

 

 

Edit: Wikipedia article that contains a summary of the ongoing issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

[Monkey Dust]

Weird how this has been known about for years, but the government only took serious notice when a prime time drama was aired about it.

 

So many people must have known something was up, the finance department being an obvious one, but clearly no one in senior management wanted to hear it.

[wanderingfool2]

6 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

Weird how this has been known about for years, but the government only took serious notice when a prime time drama was aired about it.

 

So many people must have known something was up, the finance department being an obvious one, but clearly no one in senior management wanted to hear it.

I think part of the issue is that it the government owns the majority of the post office, but as a whole though the Post Office Limited is still considered a separate entity from the government.

 

One other note, it has been known about for years.  The government did try taking a bit of action back in the day by essentially forming a committee which the Post Office Limited (PTL from now on) agreed to open up their records to be audited, but then they manipulated records and outright lied about things going on.  So the 3rd party auditor, while they suspected things, couldn't find any evidence of wrong doing (at least initially).  Then when things finally blew up PTL went into NDA mode with mediations...where they pretty much chose the mediators that were working for them and they dragged the process out for an extended period of time essentially trying to pretend as though they did nothing wrong.

 

They then finally exited out of the mediation agreement after years and days before the report on their wrongdoing was supposed to come out and essentially told everyone involved to destroy their records (which they were legally obligated to do).  So after years of work/stall tactics, the government lead initiative essentially ended and they were back to square one (except now it's no longer in the publics eye).

 

1 hour ago, RokinAmerica said:

I also would include the ineptitude of the prosecution and its experts. How did they send people to jail for something like this without vetting the software used to prosecute in the first place?

The expert witnesses were from the companies themselves, which of course didn't want to admit anything wrong.  The prosecution was a private prosecution, which essentially is a part of the law which allows a company like PTL to hire a lawyer to prosecute someone of a crime that was committed.

 

That means that a company like PTL can stack the deck in their favor.

 

This essentially stems from secrecy and the lack of anyone being able to do anything about it without having deep pocketbooks.  Imagine the concept of patent trolls, it doesn't matter if you actually violated a patent what matters is if the cost to defend it costs more than the cost to perpetually license it then it's in the parties best interest to accept their losses.  In this case, the PTL had essentially unlimited resources which they could use to stall trials until the person ran out of money.

 

Actually, it speaks to a greater issue in modern society where you sometimes need enough proof to issue discovery requests (or you need to find something they did wrong that you can prove to get the discovery you need for the civil crimes you want to pursue).  An example in this case, they knew there existed a document that would have cleared one persons conviction...but they had no means to compel them to provide that document (not without pursuing some other case), despite the person being charged for the crime.

[suicidalfranco]

6 hours ago, RokinAmerica said:

I also would include the ineptitude of the prosecution and its experts. How did they send people to jail for something like this without vetting the software used to prosecute in the first place?

How can you vet a, most likely, closed source software?

Hence why everything bought with public money should be open for everyone to see

[wanderingfool2]

44 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

How can you vet a, most likely, closed source software?

Hence why everything bought with public money should be open for everyone to see

Forcing everything to be open source is not the way to go.  Otherwise you start getting things like MS needing to be open source or MS SQL open source etc.  At that stage you effectively limit what would be capable to use (and to that companies wouldn't want to develop for government systems if at the end of it it's all open sourced).

 

What went wrong here as well wasn't because it was closed source.  What was wrong was you had two companies that seemed to want to destroy evidence.  They prosecuted someone despite having a report that she didn't commit theft...but decided to use a prosecution of theft against her to force her to accept lesser chargers.

 

You also would get an expert witness still called by the company that would gaslight the defendant; making claims such as that there wasn't remote capabilities even though they knew there was remote capabilities.

 

One thing that I think should come about this though is that there should be laws put in place that any news organization that covers court cases should also be forced to have the same level of coverage on the case when someone is also found not guilty...as it does create issues these days where someone will be googled and instantly all the articles about them about how they are charged...but none that shows that the defendant was found innocent.

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, tkitch said:

1 Billion UKP

UKP? When did GBP become UKP?

[suicidalfranco]

26 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Otherwise you start getting things like MS needing to be open source or MS SQL open source etc.

Simple solution: if it can't go open source then it's barred as an option, someone who conforms will be picked in it's place

30 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

At that stage you effectively limit what would be capable to use

Good! The more roadblocks on governments spending the better

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Simple solution: if it can't go open source then it's barred as an option, someone who conforms will be picked in it's place

Good! The more roadblocks on governments spending the better

Super unrealistic and would cripple governments. There are no open source alternatives to SAP, Oracle EnterpriseOne, Salesforce and nobody is going to make them open source or enter in to the market and make one.

 

There is no playing hardball there, gov would cave first, easily. Have all your military logistics capability entirely cease...

 

Gov: Come backkkkkkkkk pleaseeee

[leadeater]

48 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

What went wrong here as well wasn't because it was closed source.  What was wrong was you had two companies that seemed to want to destroy evidence.  They prosecuted someone despite having a report that she didn't commit theft...but decided to use a prosecution of theft against her to force her to accept lesser chargers.

Having the Royal Mail system open source wouldn't necessarily mean anyone would or could have found an issue with the code. Not only would it have likely been massive amount of it you wouldn't have the required information and data to attempt to replicate any potential issue for find code problems since that is all not public information.

 

Someone probably would have eventually, just like it was found out here eventually anyway. Better auditing processes is the answer rather than open source.

[wanderingfool2]

20 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Simple solution: if it can't go open source then it's barred as an option, someone who conforms will be picked in it's place

If you think government's are inefficient now, just wait until you have that option.

 

It's like what @leadeater said...or even better yet, what you could end up having happen is exactly cases like this...where the government essentially creates an organization that is outside of it's jurisdiction so that it's able to operate without the oversight of government rules.  After all, the post office limited wasn't the government...it's simply owned by the government.

 

20 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Good! The more roadblocks on governments spending the better

You do realize that now instead the government would have to dump like 10x into it in order to make their own software or convince a company to do so?  No that wouldn't cut government spending...instead they would need more people to deal with non-existent software and pay more for software.

 

 

Overall you correct these kinds of actions by changing the laws to stop protecting these people.  The people who decided to prosecute despite being told there was no ground to should be prosecuted as well.  The lawyers who knew of information that people were innocent should be prosecuted.  The expert witnesses who lied on stand should be prosecuted.

 

And when I say prosecuted I mean that there should be laws that are put in place where there is an multiplier in terms of punishment.  Try getting someone for theft, for 8 months...well now you should be prosecuted for like 16 months

 

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Having the Royal Mail system open source wouldn't necessarily mean anyone would or could have found an issue with the code. Not only would it have likely been massive amount of it you wouldn't have the required information and data to attempt to replicate any potential issue for find code problems since that is all not public information.

 

Someone probably would have eventually, just like it was found out here eventually anyway. Better auditing processes is the answer rather than open source.

Yea, exactly what I was trying to get across   Open source doesn't mean anything really...it ultimately still would have fallen down to an expert witness...which the Post Office is the one who presents (and the people getting prosecuted wouldn't even have the funds to fire one anyways)

[williamcll]

For those that were charged, would this clear their criminal record?

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, williamcll said:

For those that were charged, would this clear their criminal record?

Kind of, there are many people who have been charged though who haven't been cleared of their criminal record...last I heard, could be wrong, less than half of those convicted actually have been processed so far. (The court case was years ago now).

 

Actually one of the victims in this who is trying to collect on all this has said the process is essentially like her going to court again and being prosecuted...she is having to provide so much information and essentially treated as though she hasn't gone through hardship for what they did.

[kirashi]

15 hours ago, RokinAmerica said:

I also would include the ineptitude of the prosecution and its experts. How did they send people to jail for something like this without vetting the software used to prosecute in the first place?

This is the REAL question that far too few people in society ask themselves before passing judgement. If you're not asking WHY to the point of being annoying, you're not actually understanding how something do be the way that it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

[Paul Thexton]

On 1/16/2024 at 6:26 PM, wanderingfool2 said:

The expert witnesses were from the companies themselves, which of course didn't want to admit anything wrong.  The prosecution was a private prosecution, which essentially is a part of the law which allows a company like PTL to hire a lawyer to prosecute someone of a crime that was committed.

 

That means that a company like PTL can stack the deck in their favor.

For me this has to be something the government should be drafting legislation to fix immediately. I had no idea organisations like the Post Office could do this until all the recent press coverage. 
 

It is simply not right (IMO) that an organisation can simultaneously be (perceived) victim, investigator, and prosecutor.

[Paul Thexton]

I spotted this on the BBC live news feed from the enquiry yesterday and as a software engineer my jaw dropped.

 

The only way this change went live was with no unit testing and no integration / manual testing.

 

Absolutely negligent.

 

[wanderingfool2]

2 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

For me this has to be something the government should be drafting legislation to fix immediately. I had no idea organisations like the Post Office could do this until all the recent press coverage. 
 

It is simply not right (IMO) that an organisation can simultaneously be (perceived) victim, investigator, and prosecutor.

You know I sort of get it though in allowing private prosecution.  If someone were to steal lets say $1000 from me and I could prove it the prosecutors/police might deem it as not worth their time to seek the prosecution of someone.

 

Now what should happen, and I think this should be for civil actions as well, they must show that there is some reasonable belief a crime has been committed first (to prevent needless pursuing) and there should be relief for anyone who was prosecuted and it was found the persons prosecution was baseless from the facts they had at the time of pursuing the prosecution.

 

Or in some cases where you have lets say an assault but the public prosecutor just don't want to start prosecution because they feel it isn't enough of a case (even if you have proof of what happened)...it happens and sometimes the victims are just waiting watching helplessly while their case never goes to trial

[ToboRobot]

Looks like there is a TV show about this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

[Paul Thexton]

Just now, ToboRobot said:

Looks like there is a TV show about this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

Yep. The current ongoing enquiry was already scheduled to happen, but nobody’s in any doubt that the only reason so many MPs are talking about it is due to the public outcry after watching that series.

 

I was already aware of a lot of the details before watching it, but it didn’t make the gut punches any less severe, very well made and impactful drama.

[Monkey Dust]

On 1/16/2024 at 11:06 PM, suicidalfranco said:

How can you vet a, most likely, closed source software?

Hence why everything bought with public money should be open for everyone to see

A proper financial audit would have showed up a problem in a matter of days. The expected revenue that Horizon system was generating for the prosecuted post masters was so far in excess of the sales they were making. It would have been pretty obvious if anyone cared to look. It was a problem of culture in the Post Office, far more so than an IT problem.

 

Expecting all government software (not that the Post Office is owned by the government any more) to be open source, as noted above, isn't realistic, or necessary.

On 1/17/2024 at 12:24 AM, leadeater said:

UKP? When did GBP become UKP?

After Brexit, GBP was deemed 'too metric'. We now use non-metric UKP. There are 19⅔ ounces to the UKP and 14 furlongs to the shilling. 

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

There are 19⅔ ounces to the UKP and 14 furlongs to the shilling.

 

Best sentence in this topic so far

[Paul Thexton]

1 hour ago, Monkey Dust said:

(not that the Post Office is owned by the government any more)

It is. The Post Office and Royal Mail (which was sold) are separate entities.