Slashdot Mirror
Sent To Jail Because of a Software Bug
First time accepted submitter toshikodo writes "The BBC is reporting a claim that some sub-post office workers in the UK have been sent to jail because of a bug in the accounting software that they use. The Post Office admits Horizon computer defect. I've worked on safety critical system in the past, and I am well aware of the potential for software to ruin lives (thankfully AFAIK nobody has been harmed by my software), but how many of us consider the potential for bugs in ordinary software to adversely affect those that use it?"
and shit like this doesn't happen or can at least be properly traced back by a third party and gives people the means to defend themselves.
A government spokesman has stated they have "absolute confidence" in all their computer systems, and what happened to Mr. Buttle was merely an unfortunate accident that could have happened to anyone.
"I got to the end of one week and I was £2,000 short so I rang the helpdesk and they told me to do various things and then it said I was £4,000 short.
"They then said I had to pay them the £4,000 because that's what my contract says - that I would make good any losses.
"Then while I was repaying that it jumped up to £9,000."
System 'confidence'
Ms Hamilton said that, by the time the figure reached £36,000, she lied to the Post Office - wrongly telling them the books were balancing just so that she could open the office the next day."
it seems like the helpdesk did not have the power or know-how to see something is very wrong there or maybe they did see something looks off but it's not in the script. Or maybe they where near the max time per call and said said say it's balanced and I will pass this up the chain.
It is outsourcing. The sub-postmasters who are being charged with fraudulent accounting over the results of these bugs are mostly former Royal Mail employees who were sacked and hired back as independent retailers contracted to provide postal services with contracts that transferred all the risk onto the small retailer providing the service.
So these employees were forced to use the UK PO accounting software, which had bugs, and which showed in some instances imaginary shortfalls that they had to repay with no way of defending themselves. Sounds peachy! I hope some judge throws the book at the UK post office and finds some way to redress the situation.
Similar thing happened to me ~10 years ago(another EU country). National Telecom kept insisting I owed them money, when I called to see WTF is going on not so helpfuldesk assistant said he can see my payment and it cleared but system still wants moar money, he knows its a glitch and I can ignore it. A month later I get a bill for 2x what they imagined I owed them plus interest. I called again, asked for name of helpdesk guy, asked him to check it and informed next bill comes like this I will be reporting fraud to the police with his name attached - he cleared whole thing in 10 minutes.
Yes, this was very asshole of me, but it goes to show where is a will, there is a way.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
We make software for Healthcare professionals. As you can imagine, the risk footprint is pretty ugly.
We have special testing programs that are targeted at protecting patient safety.
We also have insurance up the wazoo (a technical term). Our PI Insurance covers us for several millions of dollars per claim, and hundreds of millions for class actions. It is our single biggest insurance expense for the entire organisation.
I'm happy to say that in 18 years, we've never made a claim against it, and we've never been notified of any negative consequence on any patients.
Maybe that'll encourage other CEO/CFO... to hire competent developers at the right (accurate/higher) salary. Due to the apparent easiness of the www languages (html,css,js,php) many people coming from various horizons proclaim themselves "developer", then offering their "talent" at a lower price.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Private Eye, a fortnightly UK satirical and news magazine first raised this issue
almost two years ago. Here's a link to the journalist's blog article.
In what way were you being an asshole? Someone (or something) was trying to defraud you, and you stood your ground and made them (or it) stop. That's not being an asshole; that's merely being responsible.
Kid-proof tablet..
The problem, I think, is that there weren't any books per se to begin with: Everything is tabulated with a computer, and the computer is wrong.
And when the computer is off by tens of thousands of pounds/dollars/whatever: OMFG.
But lying? No. Telling the truth is good, especially when it comes to official money. "I don't know what's happening because we're off by a huge amount of money, far more than we could ever accomplish in a day's business" is a good starting point.
(Just because the books are already cooked by some outside force, does not mean that one must continue to cook them.)
Kid-proof tablet..
The sub-postmasters who are being charged with fraudulent accounting over the results of these bugs are mostly former Royal Mail employees who were sacked and hired back as independent retailers
...
Okay, so what they're saying is they fucked over the employees by taking away all their benefits and cutting their wages, they underfunded a software project that performed an apparently mission-critical function... and then fucked them over again when (surprise!) it didn't live up to the absurd demands of management.
Incompetence on this level by the government -- punishing the soldiers instead of the generals, has already lead to the failure of one major world economy whose various bureaucratic deitrius was "too big to fail", and I see Britain has failed to learn anything from the cluster fuck that is the remains of the US economy.
Well, British citizens... speaking as someone from the miserable colonies; It'll be nice to have some company.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
In what way were you being an asshole?
Because it was just some poor guy at the help desk, who is getting paid $10 an hour (if he's lucky), and doesn't need someone to sue him for fraud to make his day worse. It's not his fault, and now he's making threats at him.
I'm not saying he did the wrong thing, just that the guy at the help desk didn't deserve the treatment he got.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What I build every day directly relates to the stats and commission of a large number of people. The problem is I'm given flawed methodology from the outset by the managers and above of these people. They basically do not have the analytical or even basic math skills required to be writing the requirements they are in charge of. When I point out all the problems with how they want to approach what we're doing, all I get in return is talk of scope creep and lines like "you're trying to fix today's problems when what we need done is the design for tomorrows system!" which I'm assuming they got out of a book or trade magazine because I hear it repeated enough. None of it really matters when they're doing something as idiotic as dividing every month by 30 to get a daily average.
"well most months are 30 days"
No, most months have 31... what about holidays and weekends?
"See? It all averages out!"
You and I have entirely different definitions of "average" and... whatever, I've written all my objections into the design requirements, please sign off that you're ignoring my warnings, thanks.
"Done!"
Again, your peoples numbers will be completely wrong...
*ahem*
The poor guy at the help desk: Was he, or was he not representing the company?
Kid-proof tablet..
They have misplaced trust in their computer system.
And misplaced lack of trust in human beings.
Accounting shortfall should not mean someone goes to jail.
It should mean a thorough investigation is launched, and the tool that first reported the shortfall should not be assumed to hold accurate information.
To resummarize:
Sub-postmasters, for those who aren't aware, are private subcontractors of the UK postal system. They are not directly employed by the government, they operate as private businesses.
The UK requires them to use specific software, called Horizon, to manage all transactions and accounting.
This software had a pretty serious bug that resulted in wrongly calculated shortfalls into the thousands of pounds. Their contracts, however, stipulate that they must make up for shortfalls themselves. Doesn't matter if the software is wrong, that's what it says, that's what it is (sounds like government to me...)
This bug went unfixed for years, despite numerous complaints and reports.
Some postmasters started falsely reporting the shortfalls as the obviously miscalculated numbers climbed to ridiculous amounts (tens of thousands) that would put them out of business by the end of the day. Because falsely reporting accounting numbers is illegal (even though the "right" numbers are obviously wrong and completely not the postmasters' fault), some of them were sentenced to prison, most likely due to the strict, unwavering and unreasoning nature of law.
Basically, they were users self-correcting for what they knew was a flaw in the software they were forced to use, and they went to jail for it or otherwise paid dearly. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. All in all, a pretty deplorable miscarriage of justice.
In the context of a court case, judges have discretion to turn over closed source to for-hire special/expert witness review and presentment to the court. So your claim of only two choices for review (OSS wins the day, vs the P.O. can refuse to do anything) is evidently meant to convince the more gullible reader into believing OSS would have made the problems experienced by Ms Hamilton & co. easier to resolve. The sub-post masters would have to sue for satisfaction either way, and hire the special witness either way.
The Postal service (and Horizon by extension) clearly wish avoid liability in this, as do any institutions of its size. Given the soft and squishy language in announcing the report, with total avoidance of addressing specific sub-post masters' claims, they'll continue that way. But as their system is already closed source, your false dichotomy claim is most unhelpful to their plight, making you out as an opportunist.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
No, really. Are you an idiot, or do you just play one on the Internet? For fuck's sake man, there are even disclaimers that state the software can't be used in nuclear power facilities.
My favorite "why we can't use Free software" argument is always "if we buy from Microsoft/IBM/whoever, there's someone to sue if it all goes wrong; if we use Free software we have to accept the liability" - a clear indication that someone's never actually read an EULA (although admittedly the limited liability clauses in EULAs may not actually be legal, but I've never heard of someone suing Microsoft when Word breaks...)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
ALL of the major accounting software packages have tons of bugs in them. They just stick disclaimers in them voiding them of any responsibility. I know because I was an accountant once, I was hauled over the coals a number of times because of it, even got a disciplinary for poor performance. I quadruple checked and added things up in excel and on paper yet the numbers which came out when entered on the software didn't add up. Until I started recording my screen and demonstrated that it was the software at fault I was entering my calculations as I had worked them out on excel. I vindicated myself but the boss had the knives out for me already and used it as an excuse to sack me and outsourced everything to Pakistan as well as getting rid of his 40 other staff.
More importantly, we prostitute ourselves to the People With Money. If Money says "no time for proper testing", "no time for proper documentation", "no time for proper architecture", we cave in 99% of the time. IT people are often very, very knowledgable, but we have absolutely no spine.
There are always "business reasons" for doing things in a half-assed way. Even when that means that other people (like Bank clerks) will go to jail for this.
But that is just one symptom of a wholly rotten system of corrupt rule and it appears it needs a proper implosion, before anything will be fixed. The banksters have taken over government and we the people already believe in their Money Ideology. We deserve all the shit we can get from this. Disregard the computer scientist, worship the money-changer and then take all the piss you can get from the money-changer.
To the customer, he appears to be representing the company, but to his employer he is authorized to read the script and no more. Always ask for the guy's manager first if you need them to actually resolve a problem by doing something out of the ordinary.
Dude, you're Australian. You're lucky to have some pretty strong consumer protection law on the books.
According to my Aussie friend if you have a problem with Telstra, or any other Aussie telecoms company, you contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and your problem will almost always get sorted quickly. He's had to call them when Telstra have dragged their feet fixing his Internet connection. After he complained to the Ombudsman, Telstra were calling HIM back and apologising, and had a team out in his neighbourhood fixing the problem the next day.
Good luck with that. I had to phone my car insurance company three times, the first two times I was promised a manager would call me back immediately. My tone went from polite but frustrated to full on shouting down the phone and threatening to come round and burn the place down angry at which point I was magically transferred to a manager. The first thing I said to the manager was that he was an arsehole for making it so difficult to reach him that I had to deliver such a torrent of abuse to a member of his staff in order for them to be allowed to put me through to him directly. I've also told several people I've spoken to at Spark Energy that they should look for somewhere else to work because having seen the level of incompetence they show to their customers I wouldn't want to be dependent on them for my pay.
Posting as AC for obvious reasons.
Our postal authority uses the same system (Horizon is the UK post office name for the 'entire system'). The counter system runs something called WebRiposte Essential written by an Irish firm called Escher. The way the system works is that everything you do on it is written to what is effectively a journalling system that is replicated peer-to-peer. It is extremely reliable, and Escher boast about it having never lost a transaction. This journalling system is indeed very solid, it is highly fault tolerant and it works very well. The basic end-of-day reports use this (it's called the message store).
Now Horizon may have other accounting stuff that we don't have here, so I can't say anything about that.
Occasionally we have had a postmaster not balancing, and in the case where it gets out of hand our postal authority doesn't just go and have them prosecuted on what WebRiposte tells them, the facts are verified rather than just accepting what the computer system says. In every case so far it's turned out that there has been theft. The worst one was my next door neighbor who was a postmaster ended up in this situation. He was entirely innocent. It turns out it was one of his staff members who was actually doing the stealing, she was taken to court and successfully prosecuted - not just on the computer evidence, but other physical evidence too. However, this didn't stop my neighbor from losing his job (the sub office employs their own staff, the sub postmaster is responsible for what their staff do too and can end up paying the price). Of course at first he believed his staff member was not stealing - when you employ someone and think they are of good character, you're going to try and defend them. The consequences for him despite being entirely innocent was nearly losing everything - he has a young family and an extended period of unemployment is devastating.
You may not understand what a "sub-post-master" does.
A sub-post-master runs a tiny little post office. The kind that doesn't have employees, or only has a couple employees. He's basically a mailman who can also sell stamps. Oh, and he's a private contractor so he can't get help from anyone in the government except the help desk. A subpostmaster simply does not have the money to hire an accounting guy full-time to go through the books every day.
No, it's a surefire way of being treat like an asshole.
Nope, at least with Dell, being nice will get you lied to and blown off. Yelling and cursing will get your dead under-warranty equipment replaced.