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Fujitsu will never be held accountable for the Post Office scandal. It is too important to this government | Sam Fowles

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/19/fujitsu-accountable-post-office-scandal-too-important

This isn’t its first failure, yet the tech giant is so embedded in the public sector that it seems invincible, says Sam Fowles, a barrister, author and broadcaster

Fujitsu will never be held accountable for the Post Office scandal. It is too important to this government | Sam Fowles

8 comments

ikidd

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Prosecution and prison time for everyone that covered this up and enabled it will still allow Fujitsu to operate. Maybe the people that are promoted might have some actual fear of punishment when they see their former bosses in orange jumpsuits and act like actual human beings.

jmiller

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And sentencing should be simple. However many years of life their decisions knowingly stole from their victims should the absolute minimum sentence. And of course every Pound they were paid since the first incident. Adjusted for inflation and with interest.

JoBo

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since the first incident

The first incident was before it was rolled out.

Driven by wider political agendas which included the protection of Japanese inward investment in UK plc, Blair ruled that the Post Office must purchase a salvaged version of Horizon. Insufficient work had been done to determine the viability of this option and the Post Office itself was adamantly opposed to the idea. Right up until the day before the Prime Minister’s decision, the Post Office were vociferous; they wished to terminate Horizon and start afresh with a new supplier.

The report, and a summary which I've taken that quote from, are hosted on the JFSA website:

After many months of detailed research, long-time supporter of the Subpostmaster campaign, Eleanor Shaikh, has very kindly allowed her recently completed report into the early history of how Post Office's flawed Horizon computer system came into existence to be made available from the JFSA website.

At almost 600 pages, 'Origins of a Disaster' gives an in depth analysis of the discussions and decisions taken from 1998-2000, heavily referencing Government documents, naming all those involved and the 'hands on' approach adopted by the Prime Minister Tony Blair at the time the final decision to proceed was taken.

Eleanor has also produced a six page summary of her report which she has made available.

They will no doubt prosecute some tiny fish doing the bidding of the sharks who paid their salaries. They're not going to touch the real villains.

MrNesser

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Here's how this will work: Fuhitsu will have solid proof probably in an email that the engineer told the Post Office about the bugs and the security issues.

There will also be a reply from the Post Office telling the engineer that they don't care.

Fujitsu are now covered because

They informed them
They were under confidentiality contracts stating they couldn't say anything.

echodot

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The problem is they still helped prosecute people they knew were probably innocent, and confidentiality causes don't apply in legal cases.

At the very least that's covering up evidence.

JoBo

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Both the Post Office and Fujitsu knew about the bugs before Horizon rolled out. The Post Office did not want it but Tony Blair told them to suck it up, and they did.

The reconfigured Horizon, presented by Ministers in May 1999 as a pristine, state-of-the-art triumph, was in fact the product of a last-ditch, fourth-choice deal in which the Government knowingly accepted a sub-optimal system; it knew Horizon had always been subject to accounting integrity issues, both before and after reconfiguration. But too much was riding on Horizon’s much- delayed rollout; the raft of reforms heralded in the 1999 Post Office White Paper; the credibility of the Modernising Government agenda; the reputation of ICL; ambitions for PFI; and the priceless nerve of Japanese investors. All of these were preconditions which New Labour needed to tease the green shoots of its social and economic renewal.

Once the Prime Minister had made his decision in May 1999, there were to be no more doubts voiced about the system, no more delays or dissent. Inconvenient truths pertaining to its integrity had to be worked around and airbrushed from view. Indeed, the favourable light in which the Government was to present the reconfiguration was one of the few bargaining chips it held for negotiations with ICL/Fujitsu. With the exception of a brief glimpse into the system’s failings which slipped out under cover of parliamentary privilege in 1999, Ministers and officialdom fell into line behind the Government’s sanitised narrative of Horizon.

catacomb

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This isn't acceptable. If it's important to the government, then all the more reason to hold them to account. This whole scandal makes a mockery of software engineering as if there is no way to ensure quality.

I work on software arguably less critical than this, in that it's never been used to prosecute anyone, yet any discrepancy in numbers is found by QA, understood and duly fixed. Why can't we demand the same from software which the outputs of can and are used as evidence in court? Why is it acceptable for them to say "it was too costly?"

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

For almost two decades, the Post Office, supported by Fujitsu, falsely prosecuted nearly a thousand sub-postmasters rather than admit the Horizon system was flawed.

From the earliest trials in 1999, internal reports show Horizon (which Fujitsu designed and maintained) caused “severe difficulties” for users.

The business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, has “demanded” talks about Fujitsu’s contribution to the compensation scheme for victims.

In 2021, the Foreign Office determined that a communications system provided by Fujitsu had “significant deficiencies resulting in a technical solution that is likely to be unfit for purpose”.

It provides major IT systems to, among others, the Ministries of Defence and Justice, HMRC, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Fujitsu’s senior UK lobbyist, Clark Vasey, founded the Blue Collar Conservatism parliamentary group with (now) “minister for common sense” Esther McVey.

The original article contains 996 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!