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At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

(www.nytimes.com)
630 points xbryanx | 6 comments | 11 Jul 25 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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cedws ◴[11 Jul 25 12:46 UTC] No.44531505[source]▶
The failing is as much with the court as it is with Fujitsu. Why did they blindly accept Horizon’s data as evidence? What if the computer said the Queen stole all the money and ran off to Barbados, would they have thrown her in jail? Why was the output of a black box, which may as well have been a notebook Fujitsu could have written anything they wanted into, treated as gospel?
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rwmj ◴[11 Jul 25 13:06 UTC] No.44531696[source]▶
The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary (and getting that evidence is basically impossible for the individuals being charged who were post office workers, not computer experts, and the source code was a trade secret).

This might change, partly in response to this case: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/use-of-evid...

Quite interesting article about this: https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-presumption-t...

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1. mystraline ◴[11 Jul 25 13:25 UTC] No.44531870[source]▶
Governments should have access to all the source of code they buy licenses to (and provided at sale), as a precondition of selling to a government.

When these sorts of things happen, the source can be subpoena'd with the relevant legal tool, and reviewed appropriately.

Why governments don't do this is beyond me. It greatly limits liability of gov procurement, and puts the liability on the companies selling such goods.

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2. varispeed ◴[11 Jul 25 15:04 UTC] No.44532962[source]▶
> Why governments don't do this is beyond me.

Brown envelopes most likely and de facto non functioning SFO.

3. gnfargbl ◴[11 Jul 25 15:16 UTC] No.44533123[source]▶
Governments don't do get source code for the same reason as every other customer doesn't get source code: software vendors are incentivized to refuse the request.

Why are the vendors so incentivized? Well, coming back to Fujitsu and the Post Office, the answer is that refusing to share the source was worth about a billion dollars: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgm8lmz1xk1o

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4. daveoc64 ◴[11 Jul 25 16:54 UTC] No.44534416[source]▶
Governments (certainly in the UK) aren't willing to pay enough to make this work for vendors.

An escrow approach is quite common to protect the government in the event of a vendor going bankrupt or similar.

5. flir ◴[11 Jul 25 17:34 UTC] No.44534924[source]▶
Then they shouldn't get the contract.

I hope lessons are learned, but I doubt it.

6. ChromaticPanic ◴[11 Jul 25 18:15 UTC] No.44535363[source]▶
This is why it's unethical for governments to use closed source software. Anything related to government functioning should be auditable.