Post Office Horizon Scandal

[Tony Baloney]

I only heard this bit today. Is there an audit trail for who did what? if there is they should be prosecuted but there are quite a few layers to an audit trail.

I work in software and if anyone asked me to do well let's just say it wouldn't be getting done.

Yes but they logged in under the postmaster's credentials.

[imtommygunn]

Could surely grab the ip address and track it back though. Difficult but not impossible.

[Main Street]

The reality is any compensation that comes from this can never recompense the suffering these people have been through. This is one of the most monumental f**k ups in British legal history and that's saying something!!!! 

Yes great harm was done but it does lag a long way behind the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7, considering there you had a determined conspiracy, a triumvirate of police, judiciary and state with all three being pumped by the media to a prejudiced  public. I would not put the post office alongside that miscarriage of justice, it's not even on the same page.

[Tubberman]

Could surely grab the ip address and track it back though. Difficult but not impossible.

The events happened 20 years ago though, that level of detail is probably long gone.

[imtommygunn]

Yeah probably right. I work in software and I just can't fathom going in as an engineer and doing that.

[Milltown Row2]

The reality is any compensation that comes from this can never recompense the suffering these people have been through. This is one of the most monumental f**k ups in British legal history and that's saying something!!!! 

Yes great harm was done but it does lag a long way behind the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7, considering there you had a determined conspiracy, a triumvirate of police, judiciary and state with all three being pumped by the media to a prejudiced  public. I would not put the post office alongside that miscarriage of justice, it's not even on the same page.

What happened with the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 and others, is a different story entirely. It was brutal and unashamedly forever be seen has an attack on Irish people who were living in the UK at the time by as you say the media, police and government.

I think what the media are spouting here with the Horizon cases is the scale of how many convictions the government led/payed Post Office cases where taken/convicted against innocent people

[Captain Scarlet]

Also, the fact that it was old dears and lovely gents in the chocolate box villages of England especially who were the victims cuts to their self-image.

[imtommygunn]

The reality is any compensation that comes from this can never recompense the suffering these people have been through. This is one of the most monumental f**k ups in British legal history and that's saying something!!!! 

Yes great harm was done but it does lag a long way behind the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7, considering there you had a determined conspiracy, a triumvirate of police, judiciary and state with all three being pumped by the media to a prejudiced  public. I would not put the post office alongside that miscarriage of justice, it's not even on the same page.

What happened with the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 and others, is a different story entirely. It was brutal and unashamedly forever be seen has an attack on Irish people who were living in the UK at the time by as you say the media, police and government.

I think what the media are spouting here with the Horizon cases is the scale of how many convictions the government led/payed Post Office cases where taken/convicted against innocent people

The reality is any compensation that comes from this can never recompense the suffering these people have been through. This is one of the most monumental f**k ups in British legal history and that's saying something!!!! 

Yes great harm was done but it does lag a long way behind the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7, considering there you had a determined conspiracy, a triumvirate of police, judiciary and state with all three being pumped by the media to a prejudiced  public. I would not put the post office alongside that miscarriage of justice, it's not even on the same page.

What happened with the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 and others, is a different story entirely. It was brutal and unashamedly forever be seen has an attack on Irish people who were living in the UK at the time by as you say the media, police and government.

I think what the media are spouting here with the Horizon cases is the scale of how many convictions the government led/payed Post Office cases where taken/convicted against innocent people

it's come at a funny time too with elections which changes the dynamic of it entirely.

There's now smears on starmer with how he should have stopped this and tories saying they've been campaigning for years when they're lying through their teeth(their lips are moving which is how you can tell).

There's an interesting clip doing the rounds with Ian Hislop going mad on a tory MP Jake Berry about it. Hislop has apparently been pushing this for a long time in private eye. He got very mad with Berry - not surprising tbh as he's another tory low life like the rest of them who cares not one jot about any human being other than himself.

[thebuzz]

Couple programs on last night was only half listening but heard one bit where a Fujitsu employee went in and fiddled figures..... How this isn't an out and out crime is more than I know

They were "fixing" bugs on live systems and in doing so messing up the figures but were telling the sub post masters that no one else had access to their terminals.

We admit to all our bugs (too many unfortunately) but we always release the 'fix' into the customer's test system prior to putting it into Live. That's the norm for most software companies.

[imtommygunn]

Were they fixing the underlying data or the bugs though? (It's bad practise alright to fix bugs but to "fix" financial data is tbh outright fraud)

[dec]

Were they fixing the underlying data or the bugs though? (It's bad practise alright to fix bugs but to "fix" financial data is tbh outright fraud)

But if the data in production is incorrect then the only way to correct that is to "fix" it in production.

[imtommygunn]

Surely you need an audit trail though and surely there is some kind of process to go through before you change it?

[thebigfella]

Most of the bugs or so called glitches (I've read about) in the system were things that could have been handled by an experience team. They were not gaps in requirements or processes but simple stuff with existing software design patterns for the root causes.

This is high profile, like Boeing Max MCAS, and rightly everyone is going wtf. I could give multiple examples of where similar amateur shite is happening but you never read about it just the impact doesn't result in death or jail. The finance industry is due a high profile case at some point as some of the stuff I've witnessed is unreal.

The big one for me was how certain people have elevated privileged's or the ability to impersonate another system user, and all without any traceability to do stuff in production systems.

[Tony Baloney]

The question of who polices the police comes up all the time in sys admin. The answer is usually no-one until something goes tits up and it is then forced upon an organisation.

[gallsman]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/13/post-office-owner-says-horizon-system-was-used-to-frame-him-for-wifes-murder

Could be opportunism but hard to ignore fact that the financial element of the prosecution's claimed motive now looks highly questionable.