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

I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points.

One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" by admitting they had made mistakes, so kept digging.

There is also a fundamental flaw in how the courts - and the Post Office prosecutors - were instructed to think about the evidence in common law.

Bizarrely, it was not (and may still not), be an acceptable defense to say that computer records are wrong. They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible, and if your evidence contradicts an IT systems evidence, you were considered a liar by the court, and a jury might be instructed accordingly.

Yes, that's awful. Yes, it's ruined lives.

But also, I think all involved have realised pointing fingers at one or two individuals to blame hasn't really helped fix things. Like an air accident, you have to have several things go wrong and compound errors to get into this amount of trouble, normally. There were systemic failing across procurement, implementation, governance, investigations, prosecutions, within the justice system and beyond.

I already know people who have worked for Fujitsu in the UK are not exactly shouting about it. And yet, they're still getting awarded contracts before the compensation has been paid out...

Lets ignore everything else for a second. Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight? We're talking about postal workers for fuck's sake, not a bunch of mafia dudes. Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors to send as many people to jail as possible, guilty or not?

run by people who did not want to "harm the brand"

Oh well, now their precious brand has been harmed, how exactly do they expect to gain the trust, respect of the people back? Maybe they think the public will forget and move on? These people suck...

> One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

Which certainly contributed to the suicides.

> if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

Is this not the case in other countries?

> They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible

This will change when elected officials start getting hoisted by their own electronic petards.

The Venn diagram of midwit enterprise developers who build systems with audit trails yet could not swear under penalty of perjury that the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case is almost a circle.

afaict, the assumption was they already were, and were just uncovered.

In Germany, calling someone by a crime they have been sentenced of, constitutes defamation.

Show me a system for which you believe the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case and I’ll show you a midwit…

What? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Why does it not make sense? If I was involved in a robbery at age 18, as a dumb kid, should I still be called "robber xyz" for the rest of my life? Especially if I turned my life around?

I agree that we should be forgiving, give people second chances etc, but that doesn't change the meaning of words. "Defamation" is when you damage someone's reputation by saying things about them that aren't true. If you were convicted of a crime long ago and someone draws attention to that fact, they're not defaming you. The truth isn't defamation, by definition.

> The truth isn't defamation, by definition. This is a famously American position.

> but that doesn't change the meaning of words.

Words can have multiple similar definitions with small variations. If I look up "defamation" I get:

> Defamation is a legal term that refers to any statement made by a person, whether verbal or printed, that causes harm to another person’s reputation or character. --- https://legaldictionary.net/defamation/

> Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

I'm not American, and we're discussing a UK news story.

But I genuinely didn't know that other countries do things differently. What does defamation even mean if it doesn't include the concept of untruth?

Related case in the Netherlands: if you just think all dual citizens are up for no good as the pretext a lot of law abiding people's lifes will just get upended.

If legislation, jurisdiction and law enforcement forget about basic principles and human rights in favour of looking productive, collateral damage is pretty much more or less expected.

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

Calling someone a robber means they are currently a robber. It can be inaccurate and untrue in the same way that calling someone a bartender would be inaccurate and untrue if they are a lawyer who hasn't tended a bar in 20 years.

I don't like the idea of prosecuting people for this, but I don't think it's illogical.

I stand corrected.

Previously, [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40682485 (obviously, it means different things to different folks; I can't properly answer your question)

FWIW I'm only really familiar with the American usual.

> The truth isn't defamation, by definition.

Perhaps you mean slander/libel?

Would you extend the same courtesy to a murderer or child rapist?

It is straightfoward to build systems which derive their state from the audit trail instead of building the audit trail in parallel. That is what event sourcing is.

Honestly I don't know, I think it would depend on how long ago the crime was and if there's a credible reason to believe they won't do it again. I do think there's a meaningful difference between "they murdered someone" and "they're a murderer", and in general I do prefer to describe people's actions as opposed to using "they're a ___" labels.

Slander and libel are subcategories of defamation.

Libel = defamation in writing. Slander = defamation in speech.

TIL, thanks!

I was attempting to emphasize the absurdity of any software system being “absolutely correct at all times”. I don’t believe such a system can exist, at least not in such strong terms.

Truth (in English law) is merely a defence to an accusation of libel or slander, and it is not an absolute defence. If you say or print true things about a person, that lowers their reputation in the eyes of an ordinary person, and you are motivated by malice, then you have still committed the crime of defamation.

English libel law is an evolution of the former English law known as scandalum magnatum -- "scandalizing the mighty". Basically, if you say bad things about powerful people, those powerful people will crush you with the law.

As an example, Robert Maxwell embezzled millions from his company's pension fund, and also used that money to sue anyone who slighted him - including anyone who said he was embezzling from his company's pension fund. He was never prosecuted for embezzling millions from his company's pension fund.

What's important is that the audit trail can be replayed to derive the state of the system - and preferably in such a way that investigators can determine what _would_ have been seen by someone using it on a specific day at a specific time. Whether the system is free from bugs is a different matter - no system is, which is why deriving state from the audit trail instead of a parallel process which is guaranteed to diverge is so important!

Means tested benefits, all sorts of problems

There are incentives to cheat

There is moral panic about "undeserving poor"

Increase taxes and make services and benefits free, including a UBI.

Increase and collect taxes.

> He was never prosecuted for embezzling millions from his company's pension fund.

He escaped that. By dying. Probably suicide.

The walls were closing in

Just in case this is a leading question: there are many courtesies we extend some but not all people convicted of a crime. Bail, parole, etc.

Why is such a person wandering around free if they were convicted? Do you think prison sentences are not harsh enough?

> Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight

The whole privatized postoffice setup was a profoundly unattractive investment-- at least to those who thought of it on investment grounds (e.g. return on investment+costs)-- and so there was a presumption before the computer system went in that many must have been in it to steal.

> Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors

One of the broken things here is that the postoffice themselves were able to criminally prosecute-- so the criminal cases lacked "have to deserve the state prosecutors time" protection.

>And was being run by people who did not want to "harm the brand"

We've seen this time and again. Organizations would rather throw people under the bus than damage the organizations reputation/brand. For example, the Church of England has tried to cover up numerous sexual abuse scandals. This is a recent and particularly nasty case:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cje0y3gqw1po

The irony is that the coverups generally don't work for long, and the reputational damage is all the worse for the coverup.

I may be dumb but isn't this what a merkle tree does? Or the blockchain sort of does (with 51% confidence?)