
Faults in Post Office accounting system led to workers being convicted of theft - scratchy_beard
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50747143
======
tialaramex
The insistence that a machine is perfect when that's impossible is also key in
some of the cases Ross Anderson has looked into where banks insist that their
customer is a crook rather than a victim so as to avoid compensating the
customer.

Here's one about a government "watchdog" blithely accepting that something
doesn't happen because the banks say it doesn't, even though victims say it
does: [https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2015/07/29/fca-view-
on-u...](https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2015/07/29/fca-view-on-
unauthorised-transactions/)

Ross and his team did lots of work on flaws in EMV (Chip and PIN) either in
implementation or design oversights - and there are a bunch of cases where a
court is told the only explanation for the evidence is that the accused is
committing fraud, only for Ross called as expert witness for the defence to
say something like er, well, that's true if say your Random Number Generator
actually generates random numbers, but here's a sample from a real EMV
terminal like the one in this case: 49051, 49052, 49053... those don't seem
very random to me.

------
StringyBob
Whenever I hear about large outsourced IT project disasters in the UK I go to
check ‘computer weekly’, and sure enough, they’ve been investigating this for
well over a decade

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-
se...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles-
legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead-
claimant#Timeline)

It’s the same large IT contractors whose names seem to come up again and again
in these public cases

~~~
oferzelig
Who are these IT contractors?

~~~
michaelt
There's Raytheon, who the government fired after they fell way behind schedule
on e-borders.... and the government had to pay £220 million to fire. [1]

There's CSC, who were paid £10 billion for a failed NHS IT project [2] - and
Accenture and Fujitsu who made billions from the failed 'NHS Connecting For
Health' project [3]

There's HP Enterprise, IBM, Accenture and BT who have so far made £12 billion
on the Universal Credit IT system which was supposed to cost £2 billion. And
it's still beset by problems, of course. [4]

Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For
one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more
money if a project is late or unreliable. For another, there aren't any
companies big enough they could offer a fixed-price contract without going
bankrupt. For another, the government generally can't provide a specification
that's succinct, clear and watertight because things like benefit systems are
so complex, figuring out the requirements is 70% of the work on such a
project. For another, most other sectors can lock out customers who are
expensive to serve - good luck using Amazon if you're illiterate, or don't
have a bank account, or don't have an address - whereas state health and
benefit projects can't.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-
ebor...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-eborders-
contract-termination-raytheon) [2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-
records-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-
system-10bn) [3] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
politics-24130684](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684) [4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-
guar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-
guardian-20180720_6-0)

~~~
candu
To add to this: a common problem with these projects is that, even though the
requirements are vast and extremely hard to pin down, stakeholders insist on
pinning them down up-front anyways because that's how it's always been done.

This is then compounded by a procurement process that sets these requirements
in stone as fixed deliverables, as opposed to offering both sides the
flexibility to reassess after interim sprints / milestones / etc.

Fortunately, groups like GDS [1] in the UK, CDS [2] in Canada, and 18F [3] in
the US are helping shift this mindset slowly but surely. That's where you get
initiatives like agile procurement [4]. Procurement aside, these groups are
also at the vanguard of introducing modern tech stacks / tools, user-centered
design, and agile project management to the public sector. (Yes, these things
exist in government, and these groups are _really_ passionate about making
sure their adoption goes beyond mere buzzwords.)

Side note: many of these groups are continually hiring, and they've been
around long enough by now - and had positive enough results - to gain some
clout. If you're tired of selling eyeballs to advertisers, there's never been
a better time to use your skills in service of the public good. It doesn't
have to be a "lifer" thing - CDS, for instance, has a number of 2-year
rotating positions.

Source: I'm an ex-fellow with Code for Canada who's continuing to work in the
public sector :)

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-
digit...](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-
service) [2] [https://digital.canada.ca/](https://digital.canada.ca/) [3]
[https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/) [4]
[https://www.canada.ca/en/shared-services/corporate/doing-
bus...](https://www.canada.ca/en/shared-services/corporate/doing-business-
with-us/agile-procurement.html)

------
tompccs
This reminds be so much of the novel The Trial by Kafka. The sinister feeling
of a machine beyond anyone's control or comprehension was a commentary on
authoritarianism and bureaucracy but it fits just as well, if not better to
our age of computers making decisions in ways that will become increasingly
hard to scrutinise. I hope this outcome finds its way into case books
worldwide as a warning about placing too much faith in computer testimony over
old fashioned human character witness and jurisprudence.

~~~
PaulKeeble
Software is now in the walls, it is the infrastructure. If we don't have an
answer for how to make it safe and reliable by the time regulators ask how to
fix the industry anything could happen. We have spent way too much time on the
speed of release and nowhere near enough on accuracy over the past decades.

~~~
ownagefool
I've worked with Fujitsu in the UK. I consider them pretty terrible and I
highly doubt said software was written to anything that would be considered a
good standard.

But it's not the software that failed to notice substantial amounts of "theft"
after implementing a new IT system, it's not the software that put the outcome
of peoples lives on the line, it's not the software that chased repayments and
conviction, and it's not the software that completely failed at introspection
and I'd alleged swept this all under the carpet.

If this is actually all true and the world was perfectly just, we'd likely be
seeing charges against Post Office management of the time, setting an example
for the rest of them going forward, but I'll believe it when I see it.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Precisely so.

------
LatteLazy
I find this so amazing from a physiological point of view: 1 sub post master
committing fraud seems entirely possible. But surely someone in the post
office or the cps, or the police or the courts should have thought "weird how
dozens and dozens of people, all the same rank, all committed fraud and all
deny it even when caught and we never recover the cash from their accounts. I
wonder what it is about the post office that makes their employees 10000 times
more fruad inclined than any other business.".

I mean, it was clear their systems were broken just because it was apparently
so easy to commit fraud, long before anyone actually appealed etc.

~~~
makomk
I don't think the CPS had anything much to do with this - these were private
prosecutions by the Post Office themselves. Which also meant that they could
get away with things like requiring people not to criticise the Horizon
software in order to avoid going to jail.

Also, it's not just that they thought hundreds of people, all of the same
rank, all committed fraud despite never working out what actually happened.
The larger Post Office branches are directly owned and operated, employing a
number of staff. They are equally convinced that none of those staff did the
same thing, even though there's apparently a whole bunch of unresolved
accounting discrepencies around those branches and their controls seem
entirely inadequate. The difference is that sub-postmasters are basically
liable by default.

------
mellosouls
This has been an ongoing story in Private Eye (UK investigative/satirical mag)
for years.

It's shocking that there has been nothing done about it, they can hardly claim
they didn't know.

~~~
notkaiho
Came here to post this. It's been known about for years, and just allowed to
bubble and simmer, while Fujitsu et al continue to profit

~~~
ubercow13
Isn’t this more the fault of the justice system than Fujitsu?

~~~
notkaiho
I'd say it's more about regulatory capture, going with the lowest bidder in
tenders and non-experts making decisions

~~~
ownagefool
Non-experts and bad people to boot. Where are the ethics?

------
specialist
Generally, IT systems cannot be inspected or audited. Because they use the
wrong data architecture.

One of the core problems is the notion of single source of truth, meaning
database records are updated in place. IT needs to adopt an accountant's
bookkeeping worldview.

The Correct Answer is to model organizational behavior as events, capturing
state changes in an event log. What accountants call ledgers.

Oversimplifying:

Ban use of SQL UPDATE, only permit SQL INSERT. (Translate to equivalent
operations for your persistence engine.)

Do not use separate "Truth" and "Historical" (aka Audit) tables. Unify them
into a single table.

Do query (SELECT) for what is assumed to be the single best record (SBR).
Rather, query for all relevant events (records) and reduce to determine
correct answer _at this time_.

\--

Forgive me for not articulating these ideas very well. My team worked through
all these issues in the healthcare space. What seemed obvious to us, like
banning SQL UPDATE, was considered radical by pretty much every one else.

If any one else is writing about these ideas, please share.

And, sorry, no, the new cupcake frosting Event Modeling (Event Sourcing?) is
not what I'm talking about.

~~~
jimnotgym
All good advice. A hybrid can also be useful.

In some accounting systems they have the ledger table (a list of every
transaction) and also a balance table (a running total)

The balance table gives you fast access to a total (by account, branch etc)
without having to add up the ledger (which may be very large), and upon
inserting the ledger entry it is UPDATEd in place by the same amount. If this
is done inside the same transaction it should be safe.

There is then a periodic audit process to lock the transaction ledger, add it
up and check it against the balance.

This gives the user a full sight of the transaction history and the fast
response of totals.

~~~
specialist
So the balance table is like a cache. I'm okay with that strategy.

On my To Do list is mash up a JDBC frontend for ehcache.

~~~
jimnotgym
Yes, mostly up to date, mostly correct, fast to access, easy to prove, not the
source of the truth.

A pretty good analogy. In paper days you would add up your various ledgers
(perhaps each in its own book, sales, purchases, cash etc) at the end of each
day and check that the whole thing balanced. You didn't get to go home until
it did!

------
m0xte
Terry Gilliam nailed this well in Brazil.
[https://youtu.be/6OalIW1yL-k](https://youtu.be/6OalIW1yL-k)

~~~
drawkbox
"Tuttle? His name is Buttle. There must be some mistake"

"We don't make mistakes"

The problem is when these aren't verified and no support for bad data
decisions.

When it is combined with authority and security it is even scarier in a
dystopian way like _Brazil_ or _Idiocracy_.

There will be mistakes, there needs to be a pathway for support and verifying
this data. Almost like a right to trial but for data decisions made about you.
And not the trial Not Sure got in _Idiocracy_.

We already have bad situations like this in credit tracking and identity
theft, it gets worse when enforcement and oversight is favoring data over
detective work.

Recourse on data decisions or algorithm decisions would be an excellent
addition to the Bill of Rights in a much needed "Right to Data" amendment.

~~~
m0xte
This clip contains the actual “mistake”, ironically a bug:
[https://youtu.be/XGge4rj4v_Y](https://youtu.be/XGge4rj4v_Y)

Edit: idiocracy is a great film. However watching these dystopian films as a
software engineer is somewhat stressful :)

~~~
drawkbox
Yeah love _Brazil_ and Terry Gilliam flicks. _The Zero Theorem_ calls out the
life of a developer pretty well and has some great satire and fantasy on our
current technology and data driven world. Gilliam is strongly anti-
authoritarian and comedic so it lends perfectly for satire of modern
technology.

Mike Judge being an engineer went on to make lots of great satiric and really
truthful comedic views of technology in _Idiocracy_ , _Office Space_ and
_Silicon Valley_.

Gilliam and Judge have an excellent knack for nailing the biting areas of this
and making fun of it fantastically with satire.

All you can do is laugh knowing how scary it can get, knowing how little say
engineers actually have to be ethical and how unethical and incorrect some of
these systems pushed can be.

We should take decisions by systems as we do foreign policy: "Trust, but
verify". This is more difficult when verifying the decision process of an
algorithm is unclear. At least giving someone a required speedy chance to deal
with a data/system decision that affects their life.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't think they're one bit funny but very scary and likely better at future
prediction than most think tanks.

~~~
ryacko
If you can predict the future, you'd be rich.

------
deogeo
> "Financially it really wiped me away. I had to declare bankruptcy. They said
> if I didn't pay it back they'd take me to prison. They said I was the only
> case," he said.

Were they the first ones, or did the Post Office investigators lie in this
case? And if they lied, why are they not in jail for, I don't know, fraud
(lying to coerce payment), obstruction of justice (his mother was convicted),
or some sort of tampering with evidence?

They shouldn't get to just settle this kind of thing.

------
coffeedoughnuts
If anyone is interested in a more in depth view of this story, Nick Wallis is
a freelance journalist who has been covering this for years. He crowdfunded
full-time coverage of the trial and posts over here:
[https://www.postofficetrial.com/](https://www.postofficetrial.com/)

------
moltar
Reminds me of the Phoenix fiasco from Canada of a similar magnitude.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system)

~~~
arethuza
Worth noting that the UK Post Office was privatised in 2013 - though I have no
idea whether this had any bearing on the events covered by this article.

Edit: My mistake - I was confusing Royal Mail and the Post Office!

~~~
noir_lord
This shit show started years and years before that and whether it's private or
public seems to have no effect, it's large organisations in general who
outsource, whether they answer to shareholders or the electorate seems to have
no affect.

------
dredmorbius
A few additional details on the system in question in this 2017 Financial
Times piece (archive.is copy):
[http://archive.is/8RzKm](http://archive.is/8RzKm)

The system was "Horizon".

The vendor, Fujitsu.

Horizon warrants its own Wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_\(IT_system\))

Fujitsu have their own set of propaganda^Wwhite papers on the system:

[https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/Images/postoffice-customer-
experi...](https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/Images/postoffice-customer-
experience.pdf)

[https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKpostoffice2.pdf](https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKpostoffice2.pdf)

[https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKPostOffice.pdf](https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKPostOffice.pdf)

An excellent and detailed bit of coverage in this blog (see meta/soapbox
below):

[https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/...](https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/08/post-
office-2nd-sight-report-into.html)

Nick Wallis (himself a BBC presenter and journalist) spins out the Post Office
/ Horizon story into its own site:
[https://www.postofficetrial.com](https://www.postofficetrial.com) There are
several posts on the settlement, one of which looks at just what the claimants
are receiving for decades of injustice -- it works out to an average of
£47,101 each.

[https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/further-
questions.ht...](https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/further-
questions.html)

Details on the trial:

[https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/horizon-trial-
day-8-...](https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/horizon-trial-day-8-going-
postal.html)

The Register, biting the hand...

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/10/subpostmasters_prep...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/10/subpostmasters_prepare_to_fight_post_office_over_wrongful_theft_and_false_accounting_accusations/)

The Horizon system was audited in 2013, by Second Sight, though the UKPO
denied the report's findings:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/post_office_deny_pr...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/post_office_deny_premature_litigation_horizon_it/)

Note that the BBC itself covered the interim Second Sight report, a fact it
entirely neglected to mention in TFA for this post. See:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23233573](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23233573)

Computer Weekly, from 2013:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240175402/Post-
Office-a...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240175402/Post-Office-
admits-that-Horizon-system-needs-more-investigation)

(Also a timeline of reporting _dating to 2009_ :
[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-
se...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles-
legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead-
claimant#Timeline) ... more below.)

The Horizon system may be replaced, possibly by an IBM project:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500249009/Post-
Office-l...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500249009/Post-Office-
looking-to-replace-controversial-Horizon-system-says-MP)

________________________________

Meta:

There are several schools of thought regarding reportage and how to report a
story. The BBC's piece here is heavy on the human impact / human interest
elements of the story, which are a relevant _element_. However it covers this
aspect virtually exclusively, neglecting to identify the timeframe or previous
history of the case, _including its own reporting_ , but also of the relevant
system and company names involved. This strikes me as shoddy practice.

Listening to a recent podcast (which doesn't much matter), a guest quipped
regarding the decline of newspapers that they would often hear from people who
would complain about the poor quality of newspaper coverage, but who didn't
subscribe to their own paper. This strikes me as an extraordinarily shallow
dismissal.

If you go through historical newspaper coverage, at least some of it (usually
national coverage, though also many major city papers) was, at least at times,
exceedingly good. I do a significant amount of historical research and can
attest to this. I also live in a household which, not on the basis of my own
support, _does_ subscribe to a major city daily paper. Whose quality is
absolutely abysmal. (The publishers themselves are something of an
international joke.)

It's almost certainly a self-reinforcing situation, but when front-page
coverage is a mix of human-interest and international newswire coverage, when
what little actual news that _does_ exist is also largely hidden on inside
pages and _also_ almost exclusively news wires, when entire sections consist
of graphic-illustration front pages and syndicated-content filler (Business,
Homes, Living, Arts & Entertainment, Autos, etc., with Sport being a possible
exception), the value proposition becomes exceedingly questionable. The
exclusive realm of semi-original coverage is opinion and column pieces, though
those too are lagely void of any material significance.

And when the writing style itself becomes so larded with stylebook syntactic
candy that the reader must wade through hip-deep lakes of the stuff to find a
single salient factual or contextual element ... what's the use? That's above
and beyond the near-total human-interest (or in politics, horse-race) elements
of the reporting, rather than providing _any_ level of background or context,
let alone focusing on it.

All of which is well-illustrated in this BBC piece, nominally among the better
journalistic sources remaining.

It's sources available online -- blogs, interest sites, occasionally relic
holdouts of higher-quality journalism (FT is ... pretty good, though even it
was light on details in the item cited here), or often-mocked (with some
justification) sites such as The Register, which actually deliver meat. As
well as the odd industry-specific outlet as with Computer Weekly.

One of the simplest, easiest, and most effective practices is simply to _list
previous coverage on a topic._ This is something _some_ news sites do, but
many do not. The BBC should absolutely adopt this practice.

Computer Weekly _does_ , as noted in another comment on this thread. See:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-
se...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles-
legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead-
claimant#Timeline)

(I'll note that HN's own moderators often step in to add not only previous
coverage of perennial topics and posts, but previous mentions of larger /
developing stories, something I appreciate about the site.)

That rot in jouralism and the news sector is to a huge extent self-inflicted
injury. And could be addressed, if there was awareness and will.

</soapbox>

~~~
TuringNYC
These types of projects typically have dozens or hundreds of consultants
involved. Given all the media coverage, I'm surprised there was no
whistleblower who came forward with evidence of poor software quality, etc.
Certainly it must have been known that even basic reports on the system do not
reconcile. So innocent people went to prison and the consultants continued to
stay quiet about bugs?!

~~~
catalogia
> _" I'm surprised there was no whistleblower who came forward with evidence
> of poor software quality, etc."_

A lot of people know that the takedown of Enron was precipitated or at least
in some way aided by a whistleblower, but what a lot of people don't know is
that the whistleblower went to the CEO, not the government, and went back to
work at Enron for a few more months after confronting the CEO and receiving
assurances that he'd look into the matter. The Enron whistleblower, whom some
have argued wasn't really a whistleblower at all, seems to have been primarily
concerned with losing her job rather than taking down the corporation for
being a fraud.

So you've got a company with tens of thousands of people, probably hundreds of
whom might have seen or heard something wrong, yet despite that the sole
whistleblower was hardly a whistleblower at all. The incidence rate of
whistleblowing has historically been very low. It seems that few people riding
gravy trains make an earnest attempt to derail them.

------
gumby
The settlement seems to be quite low (~£100K/victim) in proportion to the
damage inflicted.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
The terrifying power of “computer says no”. The computer could never be wrong,
right?

~~~
Shivetya
the best quote I have is, a computer makes very fast and accurate mistakes.

fortunately it is not as often as some think it is, but delegation of tasks
still does require those delegating the work to verify it is done correctly,
whether by machine or man. in all cases any project should have documented
means of verification anyone can act upon.

what tends to break this is having too many responsible parties to where no
one is responsible for any single point of failure and this insulates the the
whole. (the old too many cooks)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _the best quote I have is, a computer makes very fast and accurate
> mistakes._

The thing is, a computer doesn't generally make mistakes. Not unless some
hardware failure happens, or a photon flips some bit in an unfortunate moment.
It's always humans who make mistakes - computers are just executing them
blindly. They're very good and fast at it.

Now I know it may sound trite, but I don't think it is. The problem isn't
people thinking computers can't make mistakes. The real problem is that people
are thinking that the output from the computer is something else than it is.
Taking m0xte's example[0]:

"Well the thing that returned the state of the asset did a SQL join on the
history and returned the top row’s state without sorting by date."

The mistake number one is, the function that did this was probably called
"getCurrentAssetState", or something else which implied it's getting the
_current_ state of the asset. Some programmer made a mistake here. Then that
description was taken at face value and the problem traveled all the way to
end-user level, probably to some label with "current status" on it.

But that's not the only type of mistakes that can happen. Another possible
mistake: the data in the database was wrong, or stale. Another: eventual
consistency. Another: configuration error. Etc. And regardless of that, the
computer was always doing the thing it was told to, without any error: SELECT
state FROM asset JOIN asset_history ON asset.id = asset_history.asset_id LIMIT
1;.

My point is: once the discussion stops being about whether or not a computer
can make an error (generally, it can't), people can start to appreciate that
they're dealing with large systems designed by humans - and both in the large
and in the small, these systems do something resembling what they were
designed for, but never exactly that.

\--

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795557)

~~~
rrmm
The computer automates mistakes.

------
DanBC
There's a long running court case which you can find here:
[https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/bates-others-v-post-
offic...](https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/bates-others-v-post-office/)

------
jandeboevrie
Anyone know technical details about the software? What language, what
hardware, clustering, etc?

~~~
TuringNYC
Not to sound mean, but why would that matter? This entire affair is a failure
of Justice, failure of Quality Assurance, and failure of Outsourcing
Governance.

It could have happened with any language and any hardware. The problems were
people problems.

Side note: I'd hate to associate this affair with a particular software
language, as it would just be media fodder, imagine headline: "Python Software
Puts Proles in Prison"

~~~
BlueTemplar
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21796117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21796117)

------
K2L8M11N2
Reminds me of this:
[https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133](https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133)

------
8bitsrule
tldr: Incredible.550 long-suffering ex-Postal-workers -- many had their lives
ruined -- have won a court-case and will be splitting £58m.

This 20-year-old problem in the UK Postal's $1billion computer system was so
bad it has its own Wikipedia page.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_\(IT_system\))

~~~
shakna
The equivalent of I'm guessing three years pay for a multi-year life-ruining
experience that spawned mental health problems, relationship breakdowns and
other long-lasting effects:

> But "a decade of hell" later, he had suffered a mental breakdown which led
> to him being sectioned.

The point of me reinforcing the above isn't just the low compensation. It's
that it's low compensation and avoiding the root problem. Software gets
trusted more than people.

This shouldn't be allowed to happen again. Safeguards need to be in place to
prevent ruining lives over software bugs. Programmers don't trust computers to
be right all of the time. We suspect a bug when it isn't human incompetence...
Yet rulings like this don't tend to make that angle willing to be explored by
anyone.

~~~
lonelappde
Aside from all the pain and suffering they experienced, they are being awarded
_less_ money than the government already stole from them in fraudulent claims.

------
exabrial
The post system needs to be eliminated. There is no reason in 2020 to burn a
huge amount of diesel to cut a tree down, make it into paper, ship it across
the ocean, print it, ship it again, the use delivery trucks to put it in a
box, to be thrown away, to be picked up by a truck and put into a landfill.

The government is having trouble getting consumers to cut carbon. Why not
start with cutting the government's emissions?

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rahuldottech
@mods In headlines like this, it'd be great if the location could be
specified. Otherwise it's not clear unless you read the article. Eg, "UK Post
Office" or "US military"

Can we make this a guideline, perhaps?

~~~
mannykannot
One guideline is that an article from the BBC, that does not explicitly
specify a country, is likely to be about Britain.

