Post Office Scandal

[Odds]

Did you see the program?

Suicide, marriage break ups and imprisonment for fraud and theft.

Utter disgrace.

Will heads roll?

Apparently not.

Marina Hyde usually writes her her Guardian column with wry wit but on this matter you just cannot wring any humour at all and she goes on to say...

'The grim saga rumbles on, with comparatively little coverage given its scale and significance. It was arguably ever thus, with all the big beats of this story broken by the likes of Rebecca Thomson at Computer Weekly, the journalist Nick Wallis, Private Eye and the victims themselves, such as Alan Bates. The Times is currently running an excellent series of articles on where we are now, which has revealed that 59 of the victims have died before the end of the inquiry, while some victims were only allocated £1,000 in legal aid. The Post Office has spent £100m on City lawyers.'
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ce-staff-tell-inquiry-of-stress-of-it-scandal
'The individual stories are horrific. People’s lives were ruined; at least four took their own lives. Many were imprisoned, including a teenager. Tech was trusted over humans with unblemished records. As things stand, more than a year into the belated inquiry, not a single person has been held to legal account, from Vennells to the managerial class of the Post Office to Fujitsu to the civil servants responsible for oversight. Instead, Vennells got a CBE, and the rest of the anonymous boss class doubtless joined her in failing upwards on the gravy train.'

 

[Justin Passing]

Think how much worse this sort of thing will be when AI is fully implemented in all aspects of our lives.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

Computer says no.

But in a different way.

 

[transam]

The entire scandal was / is a total disgrace

And afaik no one has been brought to account for it

Some of those involved at the top of the post office

Those involved in the I T caper

Should be jailed

10 years minimum ??

 

[Vinty]

more than a year into the belated inquiry, not a single person has been held to legal account

It is the same in politics.
There is no penalty for failure.

 

[Bod ...]

It is the same in politics.
There is no penalty for failure.

Just rewards for failure in football

 

[diy_fun_uk]

The entire scandal was / is a total disgrace
And afaik no one has been brought to account for it
Some of those involved at the top of the post office
Those involved in the I T caper
Should be jailed
10 years minimum ??

The inquiry trundles on ...

Ecce Chambers

I attended the morning session of Anne Chambers’ evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry yesterday. Chambers is a former senior Fujitsu engineer, currently under police investigation. …

www.postofficescandal.uk

 

[Justin Passing]

"Computer says criminal" should not ever be enough. That one wasn't even meant to be particularly "intelligent".
Does anyone understand why it would have been so difficult to go through the bookkeeping of a small post office to check it? If they didn't bother, isn't that negligence?

 

[diy_fun_uk]

It is the same in politics.
There is no penalty for failure.

It appears as though promotion and greater riches (not penalties) sometimes await for those who perform poorly at the top tiers of business and politics.

 

[Odds]

The inquiry trundles on ...

Ecce Chambers

I attended the morning session of Anne Chambers’ evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry yesterday. Chambers is a former senior Fujitsu engineer, currently under police investigation. …

www.postofficescandal.uk

From the article:
The Inquiry chair and retired judge Sir Wyn Williams wondered if it might have something to do with the class of error Chambers had already acknowledged could be designated – unknown system problems.

Chambers conceded: “something was obviously wrong, in that the branch obviously were getting these discrepancies that they weren’t expecting, but all I could see on my side was that they were apparently declaring these differing amounts, and I certainly didn’t know of any system errors that would cause that to happen, or that would take what they were declaring and not record it correctly…. so I felt, on balance, there was just no evidence of a system error.”

No evidence. Williams pointed out that it surely was unlikely to be a user error if both trainers and auditors had recorded the Subpostmaster as inputting information correctly. Chambers replied:

“Well, yeah, I… yes, I don’t know why… I’m not happy with this one. But I still stand by there being no indication of a system error and the numbers that they were recording just didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Chambers admitted to the Inquiry that despite being told the discrepancies had occurred on various occasions at the branch throughout the year, she only looked at the system information behind the most recent discrepancy. She also didn’t check to see if something similar had been reported by any other branch. Her “investigation”, from assignation to conclusion, took one hour sixteen minutes.

Seventy six minutes to destroy someone's life. I hope she enjoys the retirement her victims didn't live to see.

 

[blup]

Sad not just for the injustice but because lessons won't be learned.

Blup

 

[diy_fun_uk]

Sad not just for the injustice but because lessons won't be learned.

Blup

It's going to get worse in general as we become ever more reliant on tech, especially with AI thrown into the mix.

 

[blup]

It's going to get worse in general as we become ever more reliant on tech, especially with AI thrown into the mix.

It depends how AI is programmed, if it includes the human tendency to swear blind something is OK when it clearly isn't then we're f***ed.

Blup

 

[Brigadier]

It's going to get worse in general as we become ever more reliant on tech, especially with AI thrown into the mix.

Not if used correctly, and within a well-thought out legal framework, it shouldn't.


My quick, knee-jerk thoughts on this are:

- use AI to sweep large amounts of data / cases
- named individuals scrutinise stuff from the above, that has triggered further investigation
- those individuals are made personally liable for any actions taken (i.e. in the case of wrongful conviction).

"The computer banged them up; nothing to do with me!" defence can't be permitted.

 

[diy_fun_uk]

Not if used correctly, and within a well-thought out legal framework, it shouldn't.

This won't happen across all quarters. As with any tech, some will use it for good and within agreed global policies, others will want to use it for bad with scant regard for any legal parameters. And there's a distinct difference with AI. Device A might be extremely advanced in many ways but still require a human to 'switch it on.' If device B can switch itself on ...