UK Post Office Executive Suspended Over Allegations of Destroying Software Scandal Evidence (computerweekly.com) 72
The British Post Office scandal "was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software," remembers Computer Weekly, "which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history."
But now the Post Office "is investigating allegations that a senior executive instructed staff to destroy or conceal documents that could be of interest to the Post Office scandal public inquiry," Computer Weekly writes. A company employee acknowleged a report in an internal whistleblower program "regarding destroying or concealing material... allegations that a senior Post Office member of staff had instructed their team to destroy or conceal material of possible interest to the inquiry, and that the same individual had engaged in inappropriate behaviour." The shocking revelation echoes evidence from appeals against wrongful convictions in 2021. During the Court of Appeal trials it was revealed that a senior Post Office executive instructed employees to shred documents that undermined an insistence that its Horizon computer system was robust, amid claims that errors in the system caused unexplained accounting shortfalls.
But now the Post Office "is investigating allegations that a senior executive instructed staff to destroy or conceal documents that could be of interest to the Post Office scandal public inquiry," Computer Weekly writes. A company employee acknowleged a report in an internal whistleblower program "regarding destroying or concealing material... allegations that a senior Post Office member of staff had instructed their team to destroy or conceal material of possible interest to the inquiry, and that the same individual had engaged in inappropriate behaviour." The shocking revelation echoes evidence from appeals against wrongful convictions in 2021. During the Court of Appeal trials it was revealed that a senior Post Office executive instructed employees to shred documents that undermined an insistence that its Horizon computer system was robust, amid claims that errors in the system caused unexplained accounting shortfalls.
fujitsu needs to go to court as well (Score:2)
fujitsu needs to go to court as well.
The UK Post Office Executives are covering for fujitsu shit software.
Re:fujitsu needs to go to court as well (Score:4, Informative)
The Inquiry cannot prosecute anyone but it can refer evidence to the Criminal Prosecution Service. There are a couple of people already including one IT guy who are more than likely going to end up in court.
Re: (Score:2)
*Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Anyone can also start a private prosecution, which the CPS has the right to take over at any time if they choose.
The problem now is that because these people have been advised by their lawyers that they might be prosecuted, they suddenly develop amnesia or simply refuse to answer questions directly.
Hearings (Score:5, Interesting)
There are inquiry videos on Youtube, and they are maddening. Apparently, nobody is in charge of, nor responsible for, anything at the Royal Mail. The chief legal council was not involved in any way, shape or form regarding the charges against the employees. He also wasn't in charge of investigating mail fraud or other criminal activity involving the mail. When pressed, he couldn't really articulate what his job actually was nor what he was responsible for.
A straight answer was never given as to whether or not audits were done to ensure the software was working properly. They were supposed to have been done, but nobody could say whom was in charge of them, if they were done or not, nor what the results were.
Re:Hearings (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Hearings (Score:5, Insightful)
No chance these gimps will ever see justice. Too many important people with too much to lose if the whole truth comes out.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
bring out your dead
Re:Hearings (Score:5, Informative)
The threat of prosecution is the problem. Everyone who may be at risk of being punished suddenly develops amnesia.
There is no right to silence in the UK, like there is in the US and other places. You can refuse to answer questions, but that refusal can be interpreted as you hiding something by the jury. As such people say they can't remember, that it wasn't their responsibility so they never saw it.
They can't be prosecuted for forgetting, and they won't lay the blame with anyone else because then that person would retaliate by incriminating them back. They probably couldn't do it in a way that doesn't incriminate themselves anyway, and we don't do plea bargains with immunity here.
Re: (Score:1)
Wait until you read about Jimmy Savile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Quick summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quick summary (Score:5, Informative)
Important part of the summary: More than one of these falsely prosecuted postmasters ended up committing suicide.
Re:Quick summary (Score:5, Informative)
They are also dragging their feet on compensation payments. The Royal Mail doesn't want to just admit that every prosecution was a mistake, they maintain that some were genuine fraud. The judicial system is reluctant to reverse hundreds, maybe thousands of convictions too. The British system likes to pretend that it doesn't make mistakes, so as not to undermine confidence in it, but clearly it very often does send innocent people to jail.
There's one guy who was convicted of his wife's murder on the basis of the Royal Mail system saying he was committing fraud, with the prosecution arguing that she found out and threatened to expose him. He's trying to get it appealed at the moment.
Re: (Score:1)
They should all be getting at least £600,000 IIRC.
The PO actually paying this out in a timely manner seems to be an issue however.
Re:Quick summary (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite correct. What happened was the software was so buggy, transactions would be recorded multiple times. If you hit ENTER at the wrong moment, it's possible to create two transactions for the same payment. So if someone bought UKP10 in stamps, if you entered the transaction wrongly, it might create a transaction that says you received UKP10 and UKP10.
If you happened to do the wrong thing at the wrong moment, you might end up with a TRIPLED transaction.
Now, when you balance the register at the end of the day those erroneous transactions say you should have a lot more money in the till than you actually have. And it's assumed that the discrepancy is due to fraud - the postmaster stole the money. Ditto if they try to fix the duplicate and triplicate transactions.
And of course, no one believes them - the government kept saying the machine is always right and there were no bugs. This lead to many postmasters being accused of being a criminal and many of the busier post offices owing tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds of missing money.
Sadly, a number of people couldn't take it anymore - being an outcast in their town for stealing money, the criminal charges of stealing and embezzling, and the money they owe - that they committed suicide.
And this also goes to prove that even the most boring software possible can still kill people. It's something that really needs to be taught to computer science students - software can kill.
Re: (Score:3)
It turned out that, despite denying it, Royal Mal was able to remotely access and edit the accounts as well. That meant that other people at Royal Mail had unmonitored and unrestricted access to those accounts, and had they known anyone accused of fraud would have pointed out that there were many other people who could have fiddled the numbers.
The British justice system has a general problem with "computer says guilty". Evidence from computers is in theory possible to challenge, but in practice it is very d
Re: (Score:2)
And particularly insidious was that Post Office told each Postmaster that "they were the only one" experiencing problems with the system.
Re: (Score:2)
Something that has bothered me about this is that this whole thing triggers my "everyone's guilty" alarm. I've had the misfortune of being computer janitor for retail for altogether too long and one thing that happens repeatedly is that if a till or ledger is out by a pound at the end of the day everyone from the lowest till monkey through the managers and up phones start blowing up up the food chain until an answer is reached. The times when this has NOT happened have been when someone close to the floor h
Re: (Score:2)
The PO forced people to pay back what the computer said they owed, and the PO coincidentally made a profit, if I recall the dramatisation correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, strictly speaking the software system was from ICL, Fujitsu then took over ICL. Anyone who know UK software in the 80's knows what a crock of shit ICL and more specifically ICL salesmen and managers were. I am not suggesting Fujitsu were blameless here, but I doubt they understood just what they had put their name on.
To quote Wiki:
"In May 1996, ICL Pathway Limited (later Fujitsu Services (Pathway) Limited) was awarded the private finance initiative contract to develop the Horizon IT system to moderniz
Watch Mr Bates vs the Post Office: The Real Story (Score:3)
Re: Watch Mr Bates vs the Post Office: The Real St (Score:2)
The post office is government owned. There are a lot of powerful people who helped sweep this scandal under the carpet over the years and the less that comes out the happier they are. Ergo a lot of people will get away with crimes that would have got them banged up years ago if theyd done them anywhere else.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No it's not.
Yes, it is (Score:3)
It was split in 2 a few decades ago and the Royal Mail side was privitised, the Post Office is still 100% owned by the government. Would take 1 min on google for both you and the idiot mods who modded you up to find that out.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh Google..
Much like the Royal Navy is Government owned.
Pah!
I hate these new-fangled inter webs
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, have mod points, but obvs can't use them :-)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The general post office was privatised in 1969. The correct name is "Post Office Ltd". This has zero to do with the government.
Re: (Score:2)
The Post Office is 100% owned by the UK government. It is everything to do with them.
Re: (Score:2)
And it's 100% run as a private business operating within government regulations, not run by bureaucrats, not headed by bureaucrats. It has as much to do with the government as I have to do with Tesla as a shareholder.
Re: (Score:1)
Wrong, you know-it-all cunt.
"The Post Office is owned by the government, through the Department for. Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and UK Government."
https://researchbriefings.file... [parliament.uk]
Re: (Score:2)
It's run as a private business. It is not operated at the whim of the government. The fact that the government is the owner isn't relevant.
Re: (Score:2)
You were wrong, and you can't admit it, ha ha ha ha ha!
Except for the purposes of the discussion I was right. Also "ha ha ha ha ha"? How old are you? Does your dad know you're using his Slashdot account?
Re: (Score:3)
If you want actual knowledge you need to understand that a private business owned by the government is still a private business. The post office is not run by a party bureaucrat. It is not a government department. The only thing the government has to do with it is setting budget and passing legal regulation.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice back pedalling mate!
Its 100% owned by the UK government, ergo its not a "private business".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its not a private company, its a government organisation.
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Perhaps stick to discussing american companies.
Re: (Score:2)
Post Office
Post Office has a separate website
The Post Office provides mail, financial and government services to the public through its nationwide network of post office branches.
Post Office is a public corporation of the Department for Business and Trade.
(Emphasis mine)
See? The Post Office is a public corporation, which means a corporation owned by the state. It is not a governmental organisation. It is a company which happens to be owned by the state. But it is legally equal to any other corporation out there and has to follow the same rules.
Re: (Score:2)
Public != private. HTH.
Re: (Score:2)
No back pedaling at all. It's core to the discussion here. The UK government *DOES NOT RUN THE POSTOFFICE*. It is a private limited corporation that happens to be government owned. It is not governed by government policy, only by laws and regulations.
If you don't understand how this is fundamentally different from a government run department (e.g. the USPS) then I really don't know how to help you.
Perhaps tell that to the UK government (Score:3)
1969 was when it was made a public corporation you ignorant tit. Half was privatised in the 2010s the other half wasn't and thats the half under discussion:
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Shocking revelation (Score:2)
I'd be more shocked if evidence didn't get destroyed. I'm still shaking my head from when my company was deleting all email beyond 2 months old. It's hard to believe that was either legal or we had lawyers that bad.
Re: (Score:2)
"Most widespread miscarriage..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone has a pretty strange definition of "justice" or "miscarriage" thereof, or a VERY short conception of British history.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on your definition of a miscarriage of justice.
Why are you so quick to inject strawman arguments into this thread? Your first strawman was that Sunak had nothing to do with this scandal. Your second is to argue about this scandal is a miscarriage of justice as if people disagree with that.
No one said Sunak was involved. No one said this is not a miscarriage of justice. The dispute again is Sunak describes it as the "most widespread miscarriage". Given his family history, one would think Sunak would know better.
Re: (Score:2)
Sunak has nothing to do with this.
Every prime minister who sat on their arse and did nothing while it went on is at fault.
Re: (Score:2)
I think his definition includes only charges and convictions through the court system. Over 900 postal workers convicted for a crime they did not commit. So it's a single type of charge (fraud against the post office) and an identifiable group of people (postal workers). That gives you a finite number to compare against.
Systemic injustices (colonial abuses, etc.) are not part of that.
Re: (Score:2)
No they don't. You're thinking "justice" as in the process of doing right or wrong. The definition in play here is "justice" - the administration of law and the legal system.
900 people incorrectly convicted for the same thing is most definitely the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history.
A troika of thugs in politics ... (Score:2)
... and official positions has been for years preventing this legal battle from reaching its only morally acceptable conclusion:
Serious jailtime for quite a few responsible for this hideous crime.
They let regular clerks and local post office employees go to jail, get suspended, fired, their pensions cancelled and damages pulled out of their salaries and their lives ruined to protect unbelievably shitty software with fundamentally flawed and amateurish feature-implementations all while a slew of spineless mi
Re: (Score:3)
Repeated Prime Ministers have kicked this can down the road despite it being obvious to blind freddie 10 years ago something was fundamentally wrong with the whole matter.
Innocent people went to prison (Score:1)
Innocent people went to prison so suspending the actual criminal from their job seems fair I guess the matter is fully resolved now.
Someone needs to go to jail (Score:3)
Given that at least four people are dead as a result of this stupidity, ( https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/... [mirror.co.uk] ), somebody's sorry ass needs to be rotting in jail.
My choice in calling it 'stupidity' was made carefully. One story which I read noted that "Errors made by the Horizon software, which was made by tech firm Fujitsu and used by the Post Office, led to the wrongful conviction of more than 700 people over false accounting and theft between 1999 and 2015".
Think about that for a moment. All of a sudden there's an epidemic of postmasters supposedly stealing significant amounts of money, at an average rate of 44 postmasters per year. The first two years - maybe three - can be excused. After that, simply accepting that suddenly an average of 44 postmasters every year were "going bad" - then proceeding to prosecute all of them - was criminal stupidity. Somebody, or several bodies, should spend a LOT of time in jail over this.
Re: (Score:2)
The prosecuting authority for this was the Post Office themselves as they brought Private Prosecutions because the rules of evidence favour them and basically it was assumed in law computers cannot be wrong and the Post Office were busy claiming in court that nothing was wrong. If the cases were prosecuted by the Crown under Fraud and other laws there is severe doubt that many of them would have resulted in a conviction.
There is zero doubt that people in the Post Office and Fujitsu need to go to jail for th
Re: (Score:2)
Open secret in IT (Score:2)
The abysmal status of this project was an open secret amongst IT professional, failure covered my the industry press and ignored by the mainstream press, because the Post Office is an institution.