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

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?

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...

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.