Scandal: Post Office Horizon The Worst Software Ever? | Short Documentary
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- Опубліковано 23 вер 2024
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During the late 90s and 2000's a Post Office accounting software known as horizon produced by a Fujitsu subsidiary, falsely indicated short falls on hundreds of Post office accounts.
This resulted in hundreds of false convictions of fraud, what's more the post office knew and continued to charge their workers the short fall......
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Fun Words: Therac-25, Software Glitch, Post office Scandal, Poor Design, Disaster Management, Wrongful Conviction
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Just dropping by to insist again that the bingo card needs a "Guilty parties walk free" slot.
Right in de middle as well.
So why are you taking sponsorships from sketchy services? Wouldn't using a VPN turn one's infringement willful?
Please don't ❤ those sex bot comments. Profile pic gives them away.
If software can do this, what ELSE can it do?? (hint hint Domain; selections, not elections)
@@TrianglePants What does that have to do with the sponsor?
Makes my blood boil! Honest people getting their lives destroyed because the top management would refuse to admit that an extremely expensive project had failed...
It was terrible
Those responsible should get jail time, not just have their gongs removed.
@@richardjames3356 There is some serious failing of the courts and prosecution as well, there are so many people who need prison time over this. And rather than only the country paying compensation, it needs to be the judges, prosecutors and company who cough up first.
I would been surprised and shock if I heard of this in early 2000s, sadly now this doesn't shock or surprise me in least, just seems par for the course these days and clearly was as well for a very long time ago, I was just ignorant of it back then.
This is becoming more and more prominent in our capitalist society. Government entities and corporations are given more slack as the years go on and the private individual is bearing more of the work and responsibility. I do work for such an organization though I cannot specify due to legal reasons. But every time a auditor, manager, or military person finds 5 minutes a low level worker is not working they file complaints. I'm not kidding... Last year we received complaints that workers were leaving the work area to wash their hands 5 minutes before lunch. After handling materials coated with chemicals and metals known to cause cancer they are expected to wash their hands on their own time before their 30 minute unpaid lunch? After learning this I went to the cubes where these a-holes work to confront them. I walked in and they were all standing around playing a game of corn hole. I asked them what the charge code was for corn hole so my guys could use it to wash their hands.
Let's not forget, it was known from the start that this system was faulty and was unfit for service. The post office and vendor *knew* it was faulty when these people were being proscuted (by the Post Office).
Never forget.
It is almost comical how the system never met the initial requirements, that's a massive red flag right there! This is what's known as a "death march project".
Never forget? Nobody even learned anything they could forget.
The same people later told them “safe and effective” and everyone believed it.
@@The20thHijackerHaving keenly followed the testimonies, a lot of very senior people (in apparent non-jobs where they apparently weren't responsible for much of anything) have forgotten a great deal it seems! I mean to say "forgotten" of course. They've *FORGOTTEN* lots and lots.
And anyone who can be proven to have known about the faults and still presented evidence saying the system was infallible should eventually be charged with perverting the course of justice
OUTFCKING STANDING COMMENT.
Really, sir. BRAVO. @@The20thHijacker
"Hey guys... there is A LOT of fraud being reported right after this new system was rolled out. Kinda weird thousands of our subcontractors were just pernicious thieves, hu? Good thing the new software found them all." - some idiot at Post Office.
"Conformation bias" at its finest - the upper level bureaucrats at the Post Office believed that there was rampant fraud in the system, and the buggy software only seemed to support that conclusion, so alternative explanations were not only dismissed but (as other comments on this video have stated) deliberately suppressed by legal action!
"Wow, glad you caught that. It couldn't possibly be the new software we rolled out, even though we know the system is buggy. We'd better got on and prosecute all those subcontractors for theft." - some higher up idiot at the Post Office
"My god no _wonder_ our budget was so high, with all this theft! We should be able give a bunch of money back to the taxpayers now!" - said none of them.
We are making a brilliant good revenue and therefore we can pay bonus to our masters..... BIG time.
It`s is some how making a big money in to us, the new system..... Gold digging system we use.
Some if not all the mob-gangsters at the PO office.
just the tory ones loving the crime and putting plebs in there place .tory loved it that much they gave the criminals knighthoods titles and a staire ways to heaven
As an It Professional, Fujuitsu claiming it didn't have the ability to manipulate values is a shocking falsehood
Lawyers told them to lie.
"Nothing will happen."
And nothing has
@@scottmccrea1873and in the end, the lawyers were the true winners here.
£11.75mn for the people
£46mn for the lawyers
@@scottmccrea1873and nothing will
i am an itenation prefessional aswell ofcarse and enciption is in this time!
@@uiopuiop3472 Care to translate that into English, my friend?
This is corporate bureaucracy at its finest. Individuals at the lower levels are fired, fined and jailed while those who instigated the faulty policies and wrote the bad programs did not have to face any consequences.
> and wrote the bad programs
Oh, if there will ever be anyone held accountable, it will be those poor sods that were just doing as they were told. And it all got rubber-stamped for the lowest price possible.
@@nagi603i work for the government and like when they “repaired” the ac system and eventually replaced it I pointed out that now that it’s 97 degrees inside with the ac on full blast we can notice how maybe you don’t take the lowest bid on getting something done.
Oh we’re now redoing it completely again, because the first company did it cheaper and also wrong, but most importantly they were the lowest bid.
Oh and the best part was them getting upset about mass amounts of people using their leave, including me and approving the leave… because as it turns out people don’t want to work in a 102 degree building
Something like 0.01% of welfare payments are fraudulent but welfare recipients receive 99.9% of the blame for money scarcity. Meanwhile tax havens for the wealthy are a thing.
It’s Government bureaucracy not corporate. It was the Department of Social Security and the Post Office. The Government.
@@Lovesausage269 Don't let 'em bully you like that, drop "OSHA" into your complaint and let the idea of how they'll enjoy the fine percolate. Though you didn't state your occupation, sounds like a typical office. As you're using Fahrenheit, I'm going to hazard a guess you're in the US. Depends on time of year, but anything above 79 with humidity over 60%, they can potentially be fined, they must provide adequate air quality to avoid health hazards, in the general duty clause: heat stroke or exhaustion is definitely possible. ASHARE Standard 55 says much the same.
57m payout, 46m in legal fees. That's 20k for your troubles, after taxes, 10k aaaaaaaaaand no one responsible goes to jail.
Would you have to pay taxes on a payout from the gov’t?
You absolutely do. They always get their cut of your cut of their cut.
555 was going to get 57,75 mill and then minus 46 mill for lawyers...... Yes the criminal are always getting what everybody else should have........ what a shix hole system and wait a minute...... Is it the PO who is in charge to pay out this money and controlling it all over again!!
This is why class actions are unethical. The actual victims get virtually nothing and the people who's supposed to be fighting in their behalf gets everything.
@@mikesanders8621This is totally false. The government has already stated that all compensation will be tax exempt. Why are you misinforming people?
The fact that this is still an ongoing scandal is crazy.
Problems from day one - 24 years and counting.......
It’s soo sad 😢
It's 10:30am in the eastern time zone in America and now I want a gyro. The tasty Greek wrap, not a malfunctioning payment system.
Hello neighbor!
Hmmm, it's getting close to lunchtime, and there's a pizza and schwarma place around the corner. Schwarma's not quite gyro, but it's close enough for me right now!
Gyro, (or Giro, to be precise) wasn't the payment system. It was originally the name of a bank owned by the government and run through the Post Office. It was generally used for government payments and then became used just for benefits, hence the unemployed would get a Giro-cheque or a "giro".
I've never heard of the Greek wrap before but now need to look up recipes.
@@nlwilson4892 I hope you like them!
Wow! The Dalmellington Bug part with hitting the enter button. A company that processed warranty claims had a similar issue just a few years ago. I would enter the claim info but if something that was required like the customers phone number was left out when the claim was submitted, the claim would alert you to the error. Once you corrected the error and pressed enter again, the amount of the claim increased on its own. This error would go on for each issue that had to be corrected. I alerted the company 2-3 times. Not only did they not correct the issue, they didn’t correct the claims I submitted. 🤷🏼♂️ I’m not going to force them to correct their mistakes. The company now has different software all together.
One of the worst parts is that it appears the National Federation of Postmasters was complicit with the whole scandal, instead of doing its job of supporting its members.
Thus unions are not your friends
Wouldn't only actual postmasters be members, while sub-sub postmasters (who are private business owners contracting with the post office) be ineligible for membership?
@paulrasmussen8953 the huge corporation (Horizon/Fujitsu) and management (the Post Office heads) are not your friends. If the newsagents/sub-sub postmasters had been actual employees, rather than contractors, they would have been union members.
@@FayeVert unions are still kot your friends. Jist look at hostess.
@@FayeVert No, they were members.
They were mentioned several times in the original computer weekly article.
Great tragedy for those poor folks who got shafted by this faulty software. Rubbish system. A shame that none of the officials responsible for this rubbish system never when to the penitentiary.
It is a shame!
Still a chance people will get bird over this (a few years jail ) ....
There's still a chance they could.
it's not a shame it's a sham
The tragedy isn’t the crap software. The tragedy is the people who decided to prosecute rather than admit their software sucked.
But apparently none of them were even punished by the department.
How the hell does 46 out of 57.75 million get eaten up in legal fees? That's evil. And I'm sure lawyers have no idea why they have such a bad public perception.
A high court case. Plus the fact the former sub postmasters had to lawyer up with the best of the best, because you can be sure the PO would do the same. What pisses me off is that the former sub postmasters were landed with the legal costs. The court should've made the PO pay.
@@cjmillsnun Legal fees are a perversion of justice. It is a big part of why Corpos get away with so much s----- they can just bury those they wronged in court fees, and those who got wronged CAN'T get justice due to the insane costs.
@@cjmillsnun All the postmasters got to pay ALL the cost when they got wrongfully accused. But when the PO staff is in bad situation about their truthfulness then the postmasters have to pay again for the wrongdoing from PO office!!. Just amazing of wrongdoing in Judaical system in UK!!
Usually the UK has loser pay rules, so if you win, the other side pays your lawyers. It's rare for a winner to pay legal fees.
Also, good lawyers are expensive, like many other good services. However the most expensive lawyers are cheap, bad lawyers. Try this yourself. I am an atty. I deal with the ruin of cheap bad lawyers every single day as I try to salvage what I can for my client.
The Post Office paid their own legal fees lol ie by the government, ie by us taxpayers
I'm an American, but I watched Mr Bates vs The Post Office, and I was INFURIATED by what happened. While I figure there was some embellishment because, of course, it is still absolutely shocking and unacceptable.
It’s such a shock!
Unfortunately there was very very little embellishment. It was highly accurate.
This whole story makes me so angry I can’t even formulate a coherent reply. A friend of mine was caught up right at the beginning not for much (always for around £20 or so) but I saw the effect this had on her and there are so so many who had it infinitely worse. I’ll say, there’s no group of people LESS likely to commit fraud than PostMasters. I expect no less then jail time and clawing back every penny spent for those in charge at the post office. Mr Bates, you are my hero.
It wasn't embellished. This is the USA.
I wish you were right in suggesting it was embellished, sadly though not the case.
It wasn't just the poor software, it was the very aggressive approach the post office took to prosecution. They deliberately withheld information from the defence that could cast doubt upon the evidence. The post office refused to permit independent audits until 2012, on the grounds that any audit could only undermine their case, and when they did carry out an independent audit it was cut short and the partial findings concealed.
As far as any court was aware, the Horizon system was working exactly as intended, the financial records were dependable and known to be handled securely. All information to the contrary was actively and deliberately supressed. The Post Office lawyers took the most strictly adversarial approach: Their objective in bringing private prosecutions was to get guilty convictions or pleas, and nothing other than that. Actual guilt or innocence didn't factor in to their goals at all.
It rarely does in any prosecution/crown case once they smell blood
Kinda like the justice system in the USA
@@katiekane5247 *legal system. Justice has been dead for a while
The unfortunate fact is that, in a society devoid of values, constitutions and laws are meaningless.
@@anapaulatillman.6133If the government says you're wrong, then you are wrong. Sure, you can fight them in court....but oh, wait... the government has barristers on tap, controls all the evidence, funds all the courts, and, well, they "are" the government, so any plaintiff is on the backfoot from the word "go."
Good friend of mine lost his savings and his family home, he was close to retiring when it happened and had to work himself into the ground providing for his family by running a market stall and moved into a small miners cottage near Durham.
He passed away in 2020 leaving a widow.
This video just left me in an absolutely livid state. I am *_SO ANGRY_* at these monsters who did this to innocent people... There is _nothing_ that can make up for the loss of your friend's retirement, the loss of his peace, the loss of his comfort in his final years... The inhuman pricks that ultimately did this to your friend and hundred's of other people are undoubtedly remorselessly living _their_ lives with all that they took from so many others... I'm just _mad!_ Imagine using the false prosecution of innocent people as a curtain to cover for their billion dollar debacle... It's criminal! They'll likely only get a slap on the wrist... Meanwhile, they have BLOD on their hands. They stole people's lives and careers and freedoms and worth away.......... Just.... There are no words for what those monsters actually deserve....
This is why courts in the US have given defendants access to software code used to generate evidence against them. I recall one company that made a breathalyzer getting really mad that a defense lawyer in a DUI case successfully forced them to release their source code to him to ensure that it wasn't extremely flawed or even a random number generator.
A friend of mine working at our local post office was fired for 'taking money' which he swore he never did, right at the time this system was in use. We ended up losing our local community Post office, so obviously the money kept on vanishing through the Horizon system long after he was fired. Now the nearest post office is over 2 miles away, many local post office's closed due to this, and no one I know continues to use the post office as a service.
I wonder how many "postal franchises" ended up being permanent casualties of this scandal - I'm sure the losses would've impacted the capability of the service overall if the office was closed and not replaced with a viable alternative...
@gordontaylor2815 price of stamps keep going up to try keep postal service profitable. Got to wonder quite how much this scandel will ultimately cost those wishing to post a letter etc. Eg it's unlikely fugitu's insurance would cover due to lying in court etc.
Not quite full story, the Post Office had plans to drastically reduce sub branches (18,000 or so down to 10,000) - false prosecutions involved instant dismissal, also voluntary desperate resigning due to fictional losses where their contract ended on 3 months worked notice but no redundancy payouts in all these cases.
Meant often 1) the Sub PO shut down, and 2) PO did not have to pay out 2 years salary as redundancy, plus 3) these charged SPMRs and many others persecuted and scared, all paying back false losses ordered by convicting court or voluntarily or through civil court, and 4) all PO's legal prosecution costs were paid by defendant or government subsidy - so a win-win-win-win for PO
After this, who the hell would want to be a SPM now?
I love how governments are always so concerned with poor working class people accidentally getting too much money, but don’t give a single sh!t about the millionaires ripping them off for billions of dollars. That extra $100 they gave you in a tax refund? Well, they’re going to need you to return that money, or go to prison for theft. Such a crock.
“Bleep Bloop F**k You!” Is something for a t-shirt or hat. I love it!
Yes Please!
Yes please!
"Too Err is human. To totally ##k things up - that takes a computer!"
6:28
As a software quality engineer it is reiterated that we are there to identify and inform project stakeholders of quality and risk issues. Sadly, they usually look at the deadline and continue anyway. This was probably one of those cases.
People like to blame QA for buggy software, but in most cases QA finds and reports the bugs. Project managers and executives decide it's not worth the time and money to fix.
the system was a hack job from the beginning.
from the Guardian:
One member of the development team, David McDonnell, who had worked on the Epos system side of the project, told the inquiry that “of eight [people] in the development team, two were very good, another two were mediocre but we could work with them, and then there were probably three or four who just weren’t up to it and weren’t capable of producing professional code”.
That's exactly what my experience has been with this sort of thing.. I am thankful I had the foresight to refuse to work on a project that turned out similarly to this, but even warning the supervisors of the known and unavoidable error caused by the bad methodology insisted on by the boss, they still falsely reprimanded people over the bug. Even with the system itself on the report they were using stating that they were most likely errors.
While I'm not very familiar with the UK court system, it seems like is should be an automatic reversal of ALL convictions no matter what. Anyone that was fined, jailed, or went bankrupt should be compensated exactly what they lost and the legal fees should be paid separately.
Silly peasant! You must have never interacted with the justice system wherever you live. The point is to make the peasants suffer, not to find justice.
And than on top of that:
obviously interest on the money owned.
and that puts us at 0, when it is time to decide how much reparations should be paid for other damages done to the persons life.
There is UK Law, though Scotland has their own law system called Scots Law, always has had. The English government control the post office system, they are refusing to clear the names of those who were prosecuted in Scotland and so the Scottish government are talking about having to see if it can be taken up within Scots Law, in order to clear the names of those prosecuted by the English controlled post office and English UK government and indeed by the English courts. You could hardly make it up. Of course the English government will be only too happy for the Scottish government to have to deal with this (which btw happened way before the Scottish parliament was reinstated) and spend money which could otherwise be spent on even further mitigating of English government cuts and austerity on the poorest and most vulnerable. You'd have to spend weeks learning about how the UK functions (or not!) in order to fathom just what a mess it all is.
@ArtyHettyScot you're stretching the details just a little bit.
The Scottish Parliament and Horizon were both implemented around the same time.
Scots were not prosecuted by English Courts. The Procurator Fiscal service was quite happy to prosecute people in Scotland, as were the PPSNI in Northern Ireland.
As separate legal entities, Scotland and NI would rightly defend their individual rights and identities, so cannot have a legal ruling in England imposed upon them, since the prosecutions were carried out under their own legal systems.
Yes, the system was a disgrace, and the PO/Fujitsu should absolutely be carrying the can and making things right. But to say it's all on the English legal system isn't accurate when cases were brought under other legal systems.
I've worked in IT for almost 40 years and the levels of incompetence I've seen over these years is astounding.
Do you think this is an example of why there should be a professional, legal responsibility for engineers to report this kind of awful practice? In the same way a doctor would? It something I can't stop thinking about
They should immediately vacate all the convictions related to this during that time at a minimum
Full pardons for everyone prosecuted where Horizons was used as evidence and criminal charges for everyone who was involved in said prosecutions from Fujitsu execs to Post Office staff and lawyers. Taking it to the extreme, if someone carried paperwork for this and didn't come forwards they should be liable for repaying the lives they ruined with their wealth and time behind bars.
Far as I know those prosecuted in England and Wales, are due a pardon, and will have their names cleared, no longer a criminal in theceyes of the law. However the English government refuses to pardon those prosecuted by their scheme, in Scotland. The Post Office is a reserved power to the English (UK) government, so they have the final say! The only thing the Scottish government can do is take it up as a case within Scots Law, but that will take time and of course money they have talked about something like that. It was a wholly English UK government scheme (scam), here in Scotland ,we had a local PO back then shut down, with rumours of serious fraud, how awful for the post masters. People were criminalised when innocent, it all stinks to high heaven and why did the courts not ask why on earth so many were being accused of fraud in so many different locations at once! They should have smelled a rat straight away.
@ArtyHettyScot if memory serves, the pardon scheme also doesn't apply in NI either. I'd imagine it will have something to do with the legal systems in constituent parts of the UK being separate and distinct.
Dallas County implemented a new jail software system. Dallas has 1000's of accused locked up at any given time maneuvering through a complex legal system.
Inmates got lost in the jail. Jailers couldn't find them and didn't know which tank or cell they were in.
People who were supposed to be released were kept locked up.
People who were supposed to be kept locked up were released to the streets.
People who worked in the courtrooms sat around twiddling their thumbs because the accused inmates they were supposed to be prosecuting were NOT in the courtroom.
Cost the county tens of millions for the fiasco
It wasnt the software that caused the scandal.. it was everyone hiding the failures, giving bonuses based on convictions and monies "recovered" and protecting the gubmint that were involved in the kickbacks
Thanks for covering this. Such a terrible scandal which sadly cost many hard working people not only the respect of their communities, but in some cases, their lives. 😢
It is a tragedy
@@PlainlyDifficultWhile it is a tragedy, of course, for me personally it feels more accurate to call this a series of monstrous crimes.
@@hideousruin That such criminals escaped justice IS a tragedy to me.
Australia had this with Robodebt. The government did not learn and tried to get debts back off people during the pandemic also. Due to them turning all automation off on their systems it is now taking 4 months + to get any unemployment benefits in some cases.
Someone can get mighty hungry in four months
Australia also had something similar in the mid 1990s when the Australian Tax Office forced all accountants to lodge tax returns via Electronic Lodgement Software (I think it was called CeeData) instead of handwritten forms.
The software was extremely buggy and often prevented tax returns from being lodged correctly, or it simply wouldn't allow certain fields to be modified until unspecified criteria were met. Sometimes it made calculation errors.
My poor father was a sole practicing Chartered Accountant and suffered a mental breakdown because of the software. Sometimes the software would disagree with his calculator and hand calculations. Often failed to connect to the ATO due to modem issues. He was hard of hearing with two hearing aids but wasted hours each day speaking to ATO tech support trying to describe issues. He then had to wait a few days for the software to be patched then couriered out to him via floppy disk (no instant internet updates back then) and waste hours applying the software patches.
Some of his clients accused him of being incompetent because tax refunds that usually arrived in 14 days took months to arrive. Some left him only to apologise after realising other accountants had the same issues.
Never any official apology from the Government or the ATO, but lawsuits related to the software failures went on for many years.
@@maprattloss of homes, loss of insurance, a lot of people lost their lives cuz of robodebt. if theres any justice the people responsible for it wont get a peaceful end.
Pay close attention to what's happening with AusPost, the banks, bank at post, bank branch closures, the whole Christine Holgate witch trial and the utter bastardry of people like Jo Longo and Ahmed Fahour. The Citizens Party is the source of truth on this.
@@NocturnalTyphlosionI thought they dropped all the cases and repaid all affected by Robodebt. The australian government eventually paid $1.8 billion for the entire fiasco.
If the post office was reporting a shortfall when there wasn't one, and the sub-postmasters were making it up, then where did that excess money go? Why didn't the discrepancy show up in the accounting higher up? It seems like that excess cash would be ripe for embezzling by anyone up the food chain who knew where to look for it.
Yes, that's what has been bugging me about this scandal ever since I first heard of it. What happened to accountants? To auditors?
@@Asptubernobody in government or corporate management listens to us, they have their managerial degrees and law school to know better than us mere bean-counters.
I think I'd add on "risks ignored" and "winging it" for the bingo card. Not to mention "overly confident official"!
There needs to be a "higher management couldn't give a F**K" box.
Shockingly, no temporary fix... because they don't seem to have tried to fix it at all
My thought exactly. Well spotted.
funny how it was buggy and unreliable, in their favour every time.. never heard of anyone getting the other side of the coin toss do we?
Well you kinnda right but to be fair no one will complain getting more
I remember reading about this before. It's amazing how much people rely on computers and softwares to function in society. Then the repercussion when these are designed poorly makes it even worse.
The main issue was not the software though, it was the refusal to acknowledge its faults and instead hold the subpostmasters accountable. That was simply inhumane and appalling for a legal system in a developed country.
If you're not concerned about AI, you should be!
Especially when it is being pushed as a diety. The Wizard of Oz tried to warn us.
It's a national security issue now due to all the ransomware attacks, AI, and quantum computing.
The problem is not using computers and software - the problem is being willfully blind to the fact machines can, for whatever reason, make errors. In fact, because machines rigidly perform predetermined actions, if there occurs a fault, they can keep repeating some absurd mistake which a human would be unlikely to make even once. I worked in post office in my country and generally if there is disagreement between what person says and what computer says, the initial assumption is that computer has faulty data. A person from higher up then comes to doublecheck everything and figure out what where is the problem.
@@walterscientist partially at least because in most legal systems, the burden of proof lies with the accuser, not the accused. So if software says you stole something, there has to be some kind of proof that substantiates the claim. Here the archaic legal system was partly to blame that in the context of a post office, the (sub)postmaster would have to prove to not have stolen anything. Which makes zero sense if you think about it, please prove to me that you didn’t stole 100 dollars I supposedly lent to you last week huh? Only in an overly conservative country like Britain this can happen in such a way that it takes decades before the penny drops that they actively and blindly rely on backwards laws and legal systems.
In Australia we had ROBO debt. Another computer system and another stuff up. It (the software(rounded the average incomes of different professions and then applied that figure to every unemployed person from that profession. It then demanded money for what it believed were overpayment. Needless to say lives were ruined and some were lost due to the strain. And all the while the government knew the system was suspect but didn't stop it and the people enforcing the punishment of fines, fees, and discrimination of so called welfare cheats, didn't ask why there were so many people crying foul. In the end it took a long legal action to prove what the government and department of social security already knew. The ROBO debt system was in fact illegal and they knew from the outset that it was illegal because the government lawyers had told them that before the system was put in place.
Great video. My background is Computer Science, and this sort of bug is very common. So common infact that if you spend to same amount with the same retailer your credit card company will probably decline the 2nd payment. This is just one way such bug is mitigated.
Anyway, what really puzzles me about what happened is how it was never detected. EVERY Computer Scientist is aware of such bugs and their obvious to spot (duplicate database entries), records that do not tally. Again, this is obvious stuff!
Then there's auditors and accountants, and many of those are aware of such instances (why they use double entry accounting). Again, this doesn't make sense!
It is criminal what happened here. Negligence simply doesn't cut it.
I rate this as 11 on my WTF scale.🤯
It was noticed, the Fujitsu engineers knew there were bugs, the management didn't want to know. The Post Office knew the sudden and huge increase in "fraud" coincided with the new software yet told each sub-postmaster that they were the only one and hence it wasn't the system that was at fault.
@@nlwilson4892 💯
Come on: if your naive assertation is that your "background" is in computer science then I despair... and doubt it.
The scandal was not due to a "bug": it was a result of the clowns Fujitsu employed as developers' having not even an elementary clue as to how to produce a robust software system... or even how to program.
@@Fitzrovialitter It was a bug they covered up and destroyed many lives.
Yes, the project was a disaster from day one, but ignorance is no excuse.
@@nlwilson4892 Give me a break from this ignorance. These were not merely "bugs" they were gross and fundamental failures of design and implementation.
e
This reminds me of my observation that, in America, the US Postal Service delivers the mail, but in the UK, the Royal Mail delivers the post.
Royal Mail are also nothing to do with Post Office. They are now separate companies.
So not just a stupid "observation," but factually inaccurate.
@@B3Band Nope. The Royal Mail still operates as the postal service in the UK.
The system initially cost us £700m and was found to be rubbish, so instead of scrapping it, they used it for something else!
A 2020 article in private eye described the origins of Horizon
Conceived in 1996 as one of the first private finance initiative (PFI) contracts, between the Post Office and the Benefits Agency on the one hand and computer company ICL on the other, the Horizon IT system had an unpromising start. It had been set up to create a swipe card system for payment of pensions and benefits from Post Office branch counters. When, in May 1999, the plug was finally pulled on what the Commons public accounts committee called 'one of the biggest IT failures in the public sector', taxpayers had lost around £700m. Something had to be salvaged, however. So, against the better judgement of its IT specialists, the Post Office decided to use the system to transform its paper-based branch accounting into an electronic system covering the full range of Post Office services. The new Horizon project became the largest non-military IT contract in Europe.
Thank you for covering this.
I had a sub postoffice. I paid for a major refurbishment of my building as we had been promised a easier life.
Within 3 months I was in debt.
It started small only £50.
But I was used to £5. Down one week and £5 up the next. HORIZON was a disaster from the day it was installed. I wanted to purchase a second office and even more but ended up working 3 jobs a day just to keep a roof over our heads.
These supposed crackdowns on benefits fraud always seem to result in innocent people having their lives destroyed.
That's the point.
And don't actually stop any meaningful fraud. They'll crack down on benefits fraud to save a penny but ignore (or use that crackdown to get people distracted from) other fraud that costs a pound.
I'd have checked 'Time Pressure' and 'Risks ignored' on the bingo card.
Ha Australia had the same sort of issues with the whole RoboDebt debacle. The misery this caused so many people and families was awful.
I don't understand how the Post could jump to 'all of our employees are committing fraud' rather than 'that's odd, wonder if there's something up with the computers'!
I work in IT and roll out such systems for a living and the bottom line is this--when any company or agency accepts anything from a vendor and this kind of thing happens, said executives are solely and uniquely responsible and should be liable to civil AND criminal penalties. There is simply too much opportunity for corruption to allow anyone to skate on this kind of stupidity.
I had the responsibility to accept/ reject systems (in the US govt) and it could be very stressful, esp when upper management people (who knew nothing) would pressure me.
"Pitchforks! Get your pitchforks, here! Hot torches and pitchforks! Two for twenty..!"
"Don't forget your petrol-filled inner tubes! Get your petrol-filled inner tubes here! We've got all sizes and grades! We've got Unleaded ones, we've got Super Unleaded ones, we've even got leaded Four-Star ones for that extra level of unpleasantness! Three for a tenner! Can't say fairer than that…!"
Seriously, it's a bloody miracle no one's been necklaced for their role in the Horizongate scandal!
Funnily enough that was (more or less) my opening line in this year's panto!
As a long time fan of the channel, and a software engineer, it’s great to see a software engineering video!
Thank you!!
Bit of a stretch to call this a software engineering video. Makes me question the veracity of your employment claim.
@@B3Band You can question all you want, who cares?
the "flawless" design of the therac 25's software is what got me into these kinds of videos and your channel. ive herd of this story before as another perfect computer program that totally wasn't making mistakes and screwing a bunch people over
Therac was actually well-written software. The problem... is that the hardware was changed, and the software NOT re-written to work properly with the new hardware.
@@marhawkman303i thought the main issue with the software specifically was that it didn't account for the small amount of time the filtering plates took to move for different dosages and changing the setting within this time window bugged it out and ran the machine with the plates in the wrong position
@@aarontrupiano9328 well, that was PART of the problem. The original hardware had a mechanical interlock that was a failsafe to prevent the machine from operating in an invalid configuration. The deadly incidents.... were because of an invalid configuration being used. Which would not have been possible with the mechanical interlock in place.
Yes, the software was a bit buggy even as originally implemented, but didn't have a deadly result, the removal of the mechanical interlock... without an appropriate update to the software?
@@marhawkman303 Not entirely accurate, the software was written for an earlier product, the Therac 20, and reused on the Therac 25 which had a linear accelerator as well as a much more powerful X-Ray source.than the 20. They considered the software to be sufficiently safe on its own without physical interlocks, which was a major flaw in their design methodology. Coupled with software that executed commands before the results were displayed on the monitor, meant that the physicians sometimes increased the dose repeatedly without it being displayed. As you mentioned, it was also possible to misconigure the machine,by setting the dose for the low energy electron beam therapy whilst configured for high energy Xray therapy, also causing massive (10x I think) overdoses.
@@cambridgemart2075 Ah, but I didn't actually say Therac-25 in my posts now did it?
I even pointed out that it WASN'T written to work on the 25. The guy who wrote it... had no idea how they planned to use it to control the 25... none whatsoever.
To err is human. To really screw up you need a computer. To have human cover for computers screwup is corrupt stupidity.
Sad thing is, this sort of thing just keeps happening. Over in my neck of the woods they "upgraded" the pay system for public servants nearly a decade ago. There's still people that are unpaid and pay discrepancies are rampant.
Thanks for the video. Very insightful 👍
Are you talking about Phenix?
Weird how all the errors were in the Post Office's favor. If it truly were a software glitch, wouldn't there be more errors in the sub postmaster's favor?
I don't know much about the glitches that occured, but it sounds like the main issues were the way sales and totals were being handled, issues causing them to be duplicated or inflated, but never missing.
Although you're right, very strange that out of all the apparent glitches in the system, they all had the same effect in the end.
Possibly some kind of protection against deleting data added to the system was in place, implemented badly and now it refuses to take out any added information, we're it multiple entries after slow system finally registered multiple presses of enter or trying to clear cancelled purchase/etc.
Mate, that "public wifi" argument hasn't been the case for over a decades. The whole VPN business is more or less a scam at this point, in that most members of the public don't need it. It doesn't even solve the "trust problem", what if the VPN provider are selling logs? At least one case (this was a while ago there's possibly more) where a VPN provider promised it kept no logs of customer activity, they handed those logs to the police. It's shady, and it stands out as very ironic on a video like this.
and the large vpn companies buy the large vpn reviewing websites
VPNs are actually required by law to keep logs, Patriot Act and all, so that promise is entirely "we will not sell your data to Amazon, Meta and Alphabet next time we need money"... but as a person working IT for a small company, if we take much time we can identify VPNs and backtrack the client beyond them. Not super great at their jobs, which is why they advertise.
Think about it, when was the last time you saw an ad for adblockers?
@@leechowning2712 How would you trace the original IP through a VPN? Do you mean non-IP-based tracking, like browser fingerprinting and all the other nosy techniques? Particularly Facebook, every time you see their logo on a page, that logo is loaded from Facebook's servers, and they're told which web page you were looking at, at the time.
So yeah there's loads of non-IP tracking that's arguably more effective for marketing bastards. VPNs can't stop that.
Also a VPN doesn't have to comply with American law unless they're based in the USA, and most aren't. It would be wise to pick one based in a country with decent privacy laws, and wise to found your VPN company there if you did.
Loads of VPNs used to advertise "no logs kept", lyingly. You don't hear it so mucn now, now you mention.
I don't remember seeing an ad for adblockers, but then I have an adblocker so that ad would be blocked. I think advertising them would be wise though, the people seeing ads are exactly your customers! Fortunately though the big adblockers are all open-source and free of charge so there's not much incentive for anyone to pay for an ad campaign.
I'm not gonna re-hash the whole reason adblockers exist and how pissy the advertising companies are. They went too far and were too nosy. Plus I remember the WWW in the first few years. No ads and no big corporations, practically no company had a website. It was all just amateurs and enthusiasts, and a lot of universities. And it was so, so, much BETTER!
I would also add risks ignored, as they knew about the issues in testing. There is no way that software shipped without the development, build, and test teams not knowing that it was trash. Good catch!
That is backed up by the fact that Fujitsu Siemens had a backroom team secretly connecting to branches' computers and altering transactions without notifying the sub-postmasters.
As an ex investigator myself I was horrified to see the intelligence level of the Post Offices own "investigators" when they were cros eaxmined.
And this is still ongoing, last time I knew there's still many many people that were falsely accused of embezzlement.
Only around 100 have been let off
Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek: TOS where the computer was used as 'evidence' for wrongdoing... and turned out to be totally faulty.
Which was "predicted" almost 50 years before this. Good job!
Anybody who had knowledge of the faulty software and didn't do anything to correct it deserves prison time.
Ladybirds are beetles, not bugs. They have chewing mouth-parts and the forewing has evolved into a hard protective shell over the hindwing.
Fair enough thank you
Lol, I was only kidding. I needed that laugh, I just found one of my fur babies has passed in her sleep.@@PlainlyDifficult
Beetles are bugs where I come from.
@@1pcfredIn everyday life we tend to call all insects bugs, but technically only one part of the class is called bugs (Hemipterans: the “true bugs”).
Don't tell that to VW Bug owners, they're really proud of having Bugs
So they knew the software was unreliable in the 2000s and they kept on using it for more than a decade?
It's still in use today!
I watched the TV Drama of this just the other day, I'm disgusted but at the same time not shocked no one has been held accountable for this! Just reminds me of Hillsborough!
Never heard of this before and I am shocked that a computer system bug could cost so much human tragedy. What makes this so much worse is the people responsible for the system NEVER went to prison. 😢
the worst part... is that it was a KNOWN problem that was hidden while the problem grew worse.
The most senior person in the PO running the program has also not repayed the large bonus payment received for delivering Horizon.
This ongoing scandal continues to infuriate me.
Sadly it will probably carry on for a long time yet
Great video! Stories like these are important to tell in an era where AI is on the rise and apps exist for everything. These systems are wonderful tools, but they're not perfect and should be used with discernment and caution.
I first heard about this in DeFranco Show. Of course, no at top will face fines and prison time.
It is absolutely disgusting that people were falsely imprisoned
Canada had a similar problem recently, and maybe still on going. Canada hired a company in the US to make and run a program to pay the public employees. The thing did not work. Some employees would get over paid a lot more and some would not get paid. Bad day.
New Zealand also had a similar problem with a system that handled payment of school employees and probably others. It was called Novopay. Probably still causing issues.
I like the content pivot to software. Rather, I like that you are covering any massive problem and not just one niche area. Well done, looking forward to the next one! Thanks, John!
Thank you!!
Well, now i have to find a Mediterranean place for lunch. Thanks John
Bon appetite
I'm so glad you did this one -- I read about it in the BBC a few years back and absolutely could not believe what I was watching 😮
"What could possibly go wrong?"🤬
This is a tragedy due to hubris. These managers couldn’t admit their mistakes and move forward.
Wasn't ICL also owned by the government at one point, and think also ICL had load of systems in place already
I thought the name of the food was pronounced as yee-roh 🤔
That's how the Greek (and most people?) pronounce it.
Yes unless you speak Bri'ish 🇬🇧
yeah I always heard and said "hero" (not to be confused with the new york hero sandwich) or "yeero" here in America. I think the British tend to be more unabashed about anglicizing pronunciations 😅
@@mack.attack Because they didn't really have the kind of immigration that the US did until recently?
@@immikeurnot yeah probably, even now the US probably has way more Greek immigrants
"This software ruined lives." I thought this was a Windows 11 video.
😂😂
Windows 11 is fine compared to previous Microsoft blunders.
@epender it's bloatware. Win 7 and win xp were the peak as was Win 2000. Also windows 11 has too many federal back doors
@@slimm420 So do Win 7 and XP and 2000. They've always been there.
@@cjmillsnun not nearly as bad. Almost like they didn't have the bloat ware
There was a period during the 1990s, when computers were starting to become ubiquitous, that a lot of people would simply believe whatever the computer told them. I got into countless arguments with customer service agents with me trying to explain why something in my bill or invoice couldn't be right. And their counter-argument would basically be "well the computer says it's correct." Like it was inconceivable to them that a computer could ever make a mistake.
As an engineer who did a lot of programming, of course I knew how easy it was for computers (software) to make mistakes. But it was a herculean task convincing many lay people of this. Ironically, it was the spread of viruses, hackers, and ransomware which forced people to accept that computers weren't infallible.
This was a very informative and well edited video. Unfortunately, this software will no doubt join Therac-25 as a case study in engineering ethics classes.
I think your on the money there!
Should have gone with IBM.
I was thinking the same!
@emilschw8924 I worked for IBM UK at the time. They would have Mainframe, CICS, MQ and a bit of WebSphere with an awesome custom POS. In 95-99 IBM had everything they needed with the industry best transactional integrity. They went with ICL due to UK Old Boy network corruption.
Well, yes, but Fujitsu was cheaper. Which is more important: price or accuracy and reliability?
@@rogercroft3218 Didn't Fujitsu go over budget? Or was it only delayed?
I always love Plainly Difficults uploads, much love from Australia John
Keep these coming
Thank you!!
When you see something like this in the video, you wonder what would happen in such cases with autonomous driving. Here, too, one is dependent on computers and software. The problem is that wherever people have their fingers in the game, mistakes can happen
Humans are the most failure-prone part of any system
So, hundreds of people had their lives and fortunes ruined, by no fault of their own. Surely, the people responsible were harshly punished, right? RIGHT?
It's the Boeing story all over again - no responsibility for anything a corporation or government does. The scourge of the times.
On point as usual my friend, Sir you are truly an enlightened young man, so my assistant's will be with you for the rest of your earthly journey, keep em coming I'll be watching 👀!!!🙏✨👌🦉🐲❣️
Thank you!
I mean, who could've predicted that giving away contacts to the lowest bidder as a way of business would ever turn out poorly?
This is a really really good one!! I'm kind of shocked by how long this was allowed to go on for but if Fujitsu was massaging the numbers all along on the back end I guess it makes sense.
This kind of stuff and the effects it had, the way higher ups handled and responded to it MAKES ME SO MAD!
I've heard in vague terms of this before, looking forward to actually seeing the details of how this fucked up. Always love seeing your uploads, ngl.
Thank you!!
Over this amount of time with them knowing there were issues, it's no longer a failure, it's deliberate. These people had their money stolen from them intentionally.
John *really* likes gyros, noted. 😂
I had one for lunch
@@PlainlyDifficult😂
absolutely disgusting and dispicable, you can only imagine how many scandals and similar things are running behind other curtains, really puts a blemish on our current society
People put WAY too much trust into computers, even today. Especially today in fact.
People who know nothing about computers literally see it as a way to get more data, more micromanagement, and to hire fewer people through automation.
They don't understand the first thing about the weaknesses of the system, how to make sure that data is actually GOOD data, or that computers cannot make intelligent decisions.
It's not computers that get it wrong, it's the people writing the code that get it wrong. A proper quality process implementation would catch most errors, but (and I have experienced this myself), some managers will overrule the Quality team because they are holding up the delivery of the product.
@@cambridgemart2075the problem there is that even with best practices bugs are just a simple fact of reality. Unforeseen problems can go decades without being noticed, such as speculative execution exploits, and those aren't really "bugs" in the traditional sense.
Following the Computer Weekly article (completely ignored by the media and government), Private Eye also published regular articles on the scandal (ditto) and even the BBC's Panorama programme, where participants were threatened when being sued (ditto). It took an ITV docu-drama to make the government wake up and take notice, where they're now preparing legislation to quash all the convictions (to the annoyance of Fujitsu, who claim they have non-Horizon evidence of deliberate fraud against hundreds of SPMs).
john youve hearted 3 bots you gotta be more careful than this man
This reminds me of the DNA software scandal in New York State (USA) where a lot of DNA matches were falsely claimed.
Over a decade to fix this. Everyone who covered it up should be brought up on charges of treason.
This is in some sense so much worse than most of the other disaters explored on this channel: For most of those, there is a single event, maybe only a few seconds long, where everything goes wrong and the human cost has been paid. There is a point of no return after which the mistakes can't really be prevented anymore.
Not the case here. They had years to look at their own software, fix the bugs, admitting what happened, and make sure that the innocent subpostmasters got out of prison (at least).
But they didn't. This is IMO significantly more evil than what most companies otherwise mentioned in this channel do.
I hope the victims sue. Any idiot knows how’s fallible computer can be
I hope so too!
They did sue, it was covered in the video briefly. But in typical lawyer fashion, the settlement mostly goes to them while those actually harmed get next to nothing. It's the same as in the US with "class action lawsuits". They never turn out well for the "class" just the lawyers.
Unfortunately the board had some crooks on it, not idiots...
57 million settlement with 46 million in legal fees. Leaving only 11 million to those that suffered, what a shame.
Great work as always. Keep up the great work
Thank you! Cheers!
Thanks for covering this one John. I was watching a late night episode of have i got news for you and Ian Hislop the editor of Private Eye magazine just ripped the living daylights out of the post office. I never even knew this had gone on until a few years ago or how bad as in prison and suicides. Good research and content. Thanks John....
Bugs aren’t cool. But what about those ladybugs? :3
This is what happens when bureaucracy is unaccountable. Beware the faceless grey men of the public service.
Love it, but I miss the longer documentaries, John
There’s a longer one due out soon!
@@PlainlyDifficult yay, can't wait.
I have just begun employment at a dollar store here in the US, in the last 4 weeks. My training was 2 days of shadowing, to run a relatively standard cash register. The thought of having exactly one day of training in order to process millions of dollars affecting people's finances is absolutely terrifying.
Im addicted to this channel.
🫡
As a software tester myself this has been very tragic story to follow. I can definitely recognise the culture where software is released with some known major bugs with the thinking "we'll deal with it in next release, it's not like people's lives are in danger because of it unlike in medical software". Here though little did they know that people would die because of a bug in a financial software. It's abhorrent.
I like that Amiga 1000. :)
2:59 another 68k machine :) oh and at 3:36 an Apple ][, I love that!