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Top DNS domains seen on the Quad9 recursive resolver array each day

https://github.com/Quad9DNS/quad9-domains-top500
125•speckx•3h ago•72 comments

jank is C++

https://jank-lang.org/blog/2025-07-11-jank-is-cpp/
22•Jeaye•52m ago•0 comments

Upgrading an M4 Pro Mac mini's storage for half the price

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/upgrading-m4-pro-mac-minis-storage-half-price
147•speckx•4h ago•99 comments

Bill Atkinson's psychedelic user interface

https://patternproject.substack.com/p/from-the-mac-to-the-mystical-bill
262•cainxinth•7h ago•135 comments

Astronomers race to study interstellar interloper

https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-race-study-interstellar-interloper
33•bikenaga•2h ago•11 comments

Andrew Ng: Building Faster with AI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJCfif1dPY
28•sandslash•1d ago•6 comments

Repaste Your MacBook

https://christianselig.com/2025/07/repaste-macbook/
81•speckx•5h ago•52 comments

Turmeric is the culprit in a global lead poisoning mystery (2024)

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5011028/detectives-mystery-lead-poisoning-new-york-bangladesh
124•perihelions•2h ago•60 comments

Show HN: Vibe Kanban – Kanban board to manage your AI coding agents

https://github.com/BloopAI/vibe-kanban
89•louiskw•3h ago•49 comments

At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/world/europe/uk-post-office-scandal-report.html
390•xbryanx•6h ago•342 comments

Pa. House passes 'click-to-cancel' subscription bills

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/07/pa-house-passes-click-to-cancel-subscription-bills-as-court-throws-out-federal-rule.html
64•bikenaga•1h ago•6 comments

In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/solar-biggest-power-source-europe-june-2025
45•Brajeshwar•2h ago•18 comments

Show HN: Pangolin – Open source alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels

https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin
391•miloschwartz•20h ago•90 comments

Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/210/
128•speckx•5h ago•247 comments

AI agent benchmarks are broken

https://ddkang.substack.com/p/ai-agent-benchmarks-are-broken
136•neehao•5h ago•58 comments

OpenFront: Realtime Risk-like multiplayer game in the browser

https://openfront.io/
154•thombles•11h ago•40 comments

Kimi K2

https://twitter.com/Kimi_Moonshot/status/1943687594560332025
61•c4pt0r•2h ago•13 comments

The day someone created 184 billion Bitcoin (2020)

https://decrypt.co/39750/184-billion-bitcoin-anonymous-creator
60•lawrenceyan•13h ago•61 comments

Recovering from AI Addiction

https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/internet-and-technology-addiction/signs-of-an-addiction-to-ai/
198•pera•6h ago•208 comments

LLM Inference Handbook

https://bentoml.com/llm/
230•djhu9•15h ago•10 comments

The ChompSaw: A benchtop power tool that's safe for kids to use

https://www.core77.com/posts/137602/The-ChompSaw-A-Benchtop-Power-Tool-Thats-Safe-for-Kids-to-Use
251•surprisetalk•4d ago•177 comments

Postgres LISTEN/NOTIFY does not scale

https://www.recall.ai/blog/postgres-listen-notify-does-not-scale
527•davidgu•4d ago•264 comments

Batch Mode in the Gemini API: Process More for Less

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/scale-your-ai-workloads-batch-mode-gemini-api/
145•xnx•4d ago•50 comments

FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

https://twitter.com/cis_female/status/1943069934332055912
193•limoce•7h ago•79 comments

Some arguments against a land value tax (2024)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CCuJotfcaoXf8FYcy/some-arguments-against-a-land-value-tax
34•danny00•5h ago•89 comments

I'm done with social media – Or: why I have a blog now

https://www.carolinecrampton.com/im-done-with-social-media/
204•anarbadalov•3h ago•193 comments

Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

https://pico2.pinout.xyz
106•gadgetoid•4d ago•25 comments

Things I learned from 5 years at Vercel

https://leerob.com/vercel
98•gk1•5h ago•24 comments

Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough

https://apnews.com/article/tidal-energy-turbine-marine-meygen-scotland-ffff3a7082205b33b612a1417e1ec6d6
241•djoldman•1d ago•210 comments

Btrfs Allocator Hints

https://lwn.net/ml/all/cover.1747070147.git.anand.jain@oracle.com/
46•forza_user•2d ago•19 comments
Open in hackernews

At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/world/europe/uk-post-office-scandal-report.html
387•xbryanx•6h ago

Comments

belter•6h ago
Some context:

"How a software glitch at the UK Post Office ruined lives" - 2024 | 331 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010070

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

bmacho•6h ago
https://archive.md/oldest/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10...
ignoramous•5h ago

  Another post office operator, Seema Misra, was pregnant when she was sent to prison. She said in testimony that the local newspaper had published a photo of her and labeled her the "pregnant thief." While she was in prison, her husband was beaten up and subjected to racist insults, she testified.
The tidal wave of fascist & far-right grievances are so hard to contain and fight against in the moment. Multi-cultural societies everywhere are never getting rid of it, are they?
bravesoul2•5h ago
At the moment yes but always has been in the UK.
Nasrudith•3h ago
Blaming the grievances on multiculturalism is yet another lie on the never-ending pile of lies that is fascism. If everyone was a literal clone from the same insular culture, fascism will invent new distinctions to create outgroups to oppress.
nextos•5h ago
I have followed this scandal quite closely over the years, and these two quotations sum it up. Pretty sad:

"The report alleges that even before the program was rolled out in 1999, some Fujitsu employees knew that Horizon could produce false data."

"As the years went by the complaints grew louder and more persistent [...] Still the Post Office trenchantly resisted the contention that on occasions Horizon produced false data."

tonyhart7•4h ago
the employee knew something going to fuck up but higher up maybe don't want to deal with clean up and proceed to release it asap

hmm sounds like silicon valley work ethics

nlitened•3h ago
It would not surprise me if some developers at that time reported to journalists that they had a bug in their code, they'd go to jail for fabricating evidence, cybercrime, stealing of trade secrets, breaking an NDA, or something like that.
mike_hearn•5h ago
To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details of what happened by making it sound like a natural disaster.

Horizon is the case that should replace Therac-25 as a study in what can go wrong if software developers screw up. Therac-25 injured/killed six people, Horizon has ruined hundreds of lives and ended dozens. And the horrifying thing is, Horizon wasn't something anyone would have previously identified as safety-critical software. It was just an ordinary point-of-sale and accounting system. The suicides weren't directly caused by the software, but from an out of control justice and social system in which people blindly believed in public institutions that were actually engaged in a massive deep state cover-up.

It is reasonable to blame the suicides on the legal and political system that allowed the Post Office to act in that way, and which put such low quality people in charge. Perhaps also on the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't. But this is HN, so from a software engineering perspective what can be learned?

Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight. But most were bugs due to loss of transactionality or lack of proper auditing controls. Think message replays lacking proper idempotency, things like that. Transactions were logged that never really occurred, and when the cash was counted some appeared to be missing, so the Post Office accused the postmasters of stealing from the business. They hadn't done so, but this took place over decades, and decades ago people had more faith in institutions than they do now. And these post offices were often in small villages where the post office was the center of the community, so the false allegations against postmasters were devastating to their social and business lives.

Put simply - check your transactions! And make sure developers can't rewrite databases in prod.

SirFatty•5h ago
"The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. "

That's a really odd take.

RandomBacon•5h ago
> odd take

It's not odd when the sentiment is widespread, for example, look at the other comments in this thread that talk about it.

SirFatty•5h ago
Oh, well if everyone else is parroting it, then it must be correct.
reliabilityguy•4h ago
I hope you see the irony of “ everyone else is parroting it, then it must be correct”.
some_random•4h ago
You should probably just state what your opinion on it is, instead of bouncing between different complaints.
squigz•5h ago
It's not that odd - it's simply pointing out that phrasing can and does play a rather large role in how we internalize and react to news.
thoroughburro•5h ago
It was an extremely common criticism of the passive voice. Yours is the weird take.
CivBase•4h ago
For what it's worth, I agree. It never crossed my mind that the phrasing could lead anyone to believe the suicides were "unavoidable" or an "act of God", especially when the title clearly ties the suicides to a causation.

The phrasing could be made more accusatory, but I don't think that's inherently better.

ellisv•5h ago
I don't think the NY Times reads HN comments.
cedws•5h ago
>if software developers screw up

Well, yes, they did screw up, but the fallout was amplified 100x by bad management.

mrkramer•5h ago
"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]."

If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...

PUSH_AX•5h ago
Well not really, no one should be committing suicide due to a buggy system. If you know the details of the case it was widespread but the post office decided to gaslight everyone and put people in debt and prison. That’s what caused this, the bugs were just a catalyst for shitty humans to do shitty things
mrkramer•5h ago
Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts and quality test the software, reverse engineering it and try to catch the bugs. This wasn't the classic case of financial fraud, this was all about faulty software.
voxic11•5h ago
The Post Office management knew about the bugs but didn't want to take the blame for the accounting issues they caused (since it was management that purchased and approved the software some blame would have fallen on them).
mrkramer•5h ago
Fujitsu was all to blame, after all they created and maintained the software. It just blows my mind why would courts pursue the individuals and not the creator of the software, when they realized that this mess was widespread and not isolated.
blibble•4h ago
because UK law says (said?) the computer can't be wrong

and the post office management had no interest in proving otherwise

they should be going after the management

foldr•4h ago
UK law said that there was a presumption that computer systems were working correctly unless there was evidence to the contrary. That’s not inherently nuts. It makes roughly as much sense as assuming that, say, a dishwasher is in working order unless there’s evidence to the contrary. This presumption in and of itself could just as well aid a person’s defense as hinder it (e.g. if they have an alibi based on computer records).

In this case it should have been very easy to provide evidence to override the presumption that the Horizon system was working correctly. That this didn’t happen seems to have resulted from a combination of bad lawyering and shameless mendacity on the part of Fujitsu and the Post Office.

Don’t get me wrong — the whole thing is a giant scandal. I’m just not sure if this particular presumption of UK law is the appropriate scapegoat.

mrkramer•4h ago
>UK law said that there was a presumption that computer systems were working correctly unless there was evidence to the contrary.

Defense had to prove that only one Horizon/Fujitsu accounting software was buggy and the whole prosecution falls apart e.g. If John's Horizon/Fujitsu accounting software has bugs then Peter's Horizon/Fujitsu accounting software most probably has bugs too.

foldr•4h ago
In principle, yes. It may be that the bar was set too high and that there needs to be some clarification of exactly what the presumption means.

I’d argue that some kind of weak presumption along these lines clearly makes sense and is probably universal across legal systems. For example, suppose the police find that X has an incriminating email from Y after searching X’s laptop. Are they required to prove that GMail doesn’t have a bug causing it to corrupt email contents or send emails to the wrong recipients? Presumably not.

mike_hearn•3h ago
IIRC one issue was that every time someone advanced the theory something was wrong with Horizon, the Post Office kept claiming that nobody else was experiencing any issues. They also lied under oath, claiming no bugs that could cause such situations were known. Given this most the of defence lawyers abandoned that line of inquiry (they were nothing special, seeing as village postmasters aren't rich).
buzer•2h ago
Proving bugs can be pretty hard if you don't have access to software & source code. That is similar to the US, courts usually won't give you access to source code to verify if software is operating correctly, you generally only get cross examine the company representative & person who performed the test. DNA tests are one good example.

One case where defense did get access to the code (FST developed by NYC) led to discoveries (https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-judge-unseals-new...) that led to it being retired from use.

noisy_boy•4h ago
> Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts

Yea and who is responsible for engaging them?

mrkramer•4h ago
I meant courts should've called in multiple expert witnesses and even computer forensics companies. This case looks like government or in this case courts colluded with British Post Office.
mr_toad•1h ago
> I meant courts should've called in multiple expert witnesses and even computer forensics companies.

UK courts don’t (can’t) do that, that’s up to the plaintiffs or defendants.

voxic11•5h ago
But it was the decision to gaslight and charge the postmasters with crimes that caused the suicides, not the bugs in the code. If they had just admitted that the accounting issues were due to bugs in the system then I really doubt anyone would have committed suicide.
tialaramex•4h ago
So long as the jury understands this, it's all fine.

If you're on trial for doing X and your jury is told by a prosecution witness "mrkramer did X" and under cross they admit that's based on computer records which are often bogus, inconsistent, total nonsense, it doesn't take the world's best defence lawyer to secure an "innocent" verdict. That's not a fun experience, but it probably won't drive you to suicide.

One of the many interlocking failures here is that the Post Office, historically a government function, was allowed to prosecute people.

Suppose I work not for the Post Office (by this point a private company which is just owned in full by the government) but for say, an Asda, next door. I'm the most senior member of staff on weekends, so I have keys, I accept deliveries, all that stuff. Asda's crap computer system says I accepted £25000 of Amazon Gift Cards which it says came on a truck from the depot on Saturday. I never saw them, I deny it, there are no Gift Cards in stock at our store.

Asda can't prosecute me. They could try to sue, but more likely they'd call the police. If the police think I stole these Amazon cards, they give the file to a Crown Prosecutor, who works for the government to prosecute criminals. They don't work for Asda and they're looking at a bunch of "tests" which decide whether it makes sense to prosecute people.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/about-cps/how-we-make-our-decisions

But because the Sub-postmasters worked under contract to the Post Office, it could and did in many cases just prosecute them, it was empowered to do that. That's an obvious mistake, in many of these cases if you show a copper, let alone a CPS lawyer your laughable "case" that although this buggy garbage is often wrong you think there's signs of theft, they'll tell you that you can't imprison people on this basis, piss off.

A worse failure is that Post Office people were allowed to lie to a court about how reliable this information was, and indeed they repeatedly lied in later cases where it's directly about the earlier lying. That's the point where it undoubtedly goes from "Why were supposedly incompetent morons given this important job?" where maybe they're morons or maybe they're liars, to "Lying to a court is wrong, send them to jail".

pcthrowaway•4h ago
> If you're on trial for doing X and your jury is told by a prosecution witness "mrkramer did X" and under cross they admit that's based on computer records which are often bogus, inconsistent, total nonsense, it doesn't take the world's best defence lawyer to secure an "innocent" verdict. That's not a fun experience, but it probably won't drive you to suicide.

I imagine digital records are involved in nearly every trial at this point. Good luck getting this point admitted by the justice system.

tialaramex•2h ago
There are plenty of examples, Light Blue Touchpaper talks about this a bunch. You do have a problem that courts will believe technicians very broadly unless somebody competent is cross-examining to highlight where the limits of their evidence are. So your defence will need to hire such an expert and your legal team need to get the judge to understand why everybody is going to listen to nerd stuff for however long when they thought this was a case about, say, theft.
cameronh90•4h ago
> Asda can't prosecute me.

They can, actually. Anyone in the UK can launch a private prosecution. It's rare because it's expensive and the CPS can (and often do) take over any private prosecution then drop it.

Nevertheless, the power exists and has been intentionally protected by parliament. I think most would agree it needs reform, however.

tialaramex•2h ago
This is Technically Correct, which is, I admit, the Best Kind of Correct, but in practical terms it won't happen.

[Edited: Got the Futurama quote wrong, fixed that]

carstout•26m ago
Unfortunately the "its rare" isnt true. it is more common now than it was back in the horizon days. It also isnt necessarily expensive since you can apply for costs with the default being for it to be paid (unless good reason not to). As such whilst its not an option for the average person who cant afford the upfront cost it is very practical for large businesses especially if they engage in it often and hence can stand up a department for it.

Its one of the offerings from TM-Eye aka one of the "private police forces". https://tm-eye.co.uk/what-we-do/private-prosecutions/

It is an actual example of a two tier justice system since those who can afford the private prosecution skip the queue for the public system but will still normally have the taxpayer pay for it.

There is currently a consultation underway as per below article which, incidentally, mentions a more recent dubious example of private prosecutions which got slapped down.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/oversight-and-re...

DaveLond•4h ago
It's worse than that - in UK law you cannot question the evidence produced by a computer unless you can prove the computer is not operating correctly - it's an inversion of the normal burden of proof.

They've started the process of thinking about if that law makes sense given this case: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/use-of-evid...

foldr•3h ago
It’s only an inversion of the usual burden of proof if you assume that evidence from a computer can only ever be used to aid the prosecution. It can also be used to aid the defense, in which case this presumption makes it harder to convict someone, not easier.
petercooper•3h ago
A juror can, and should IMHO, however consider that evidence based entirely upon computer records may potentially be erroneous and therefore unable to secure proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. If I were a juror, I'd default to non-guilty if a case were based entirely upon the results of an algorithm or computerised records because they introduce doubt.
ptero•3h ago
Every system has bugs, even deployed, high visibility accounting systems. Debian stable, which I personally view as the gold standard for a robust general purpose OS, has hundreds of bugs.

That is not to say that bugs are good. They are bad and should be squashed. But the Horizon failure, IMO, is with the management, that pretended that the system was bug free and, faced with the evidence to the contrary, put the blame on postmasters. My 2c.

wat10000•2h ago
I'd be shocked if any piece of software large enough to qualify as an "accounting system" didn't contain at least hundreds of bugs. We're just not that good at building software. Especially if you consider that the system encompasses all of the dependencies, so you should count bugs in the OS, CPU, any relevant firmware, etc.
mr_toad•1h ago
If any large system wasn’t constantly logging errors I’d immediately assume there was something wrong with the error logging system. Only trivial software is bug free.
drweevil•3h ago
Indeed. This is not about Horizon's bugs. It is about management that was incurious and perhaps politically and financially motivated to ignore Horizon's shortcomings, enough so to knowingly destroy lives. Charges of murder should be laid.
aenis•36m ago
But we hold engineers to much higher ethical standards than management. One does not expect management to blow the whistle - or even understand whats what when dealing with complex issues in distributed systems. If the engineers start lying - its game over.

I cried when I was reading the book. So much suffering. Bought a copy for all the it architects in my company and asked all of them to read it. Should be part of curriculum for aspiring software engineers.

xbryanx•5h ago
> please don't say they died by suicide

I encourage you to read the current thinking on this evolving language, which offers some explanation as to why we're moving away from damaging language like "committing" suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committ... https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/

lou1306•5h ago
I think they are saying that the current title ("people died ... amid scandal") muddies the water when it comes to the causal relation, arguably "people were led to suicide by baseless accusations" _might_ be a more faithful descriptor of who's at fault here, but I understand journalists don't want to risk being sued (and neither do I, hence my use of _might_)
vanderZwan•4h ago
I suspect the point was that they were driven to suicide. As in pushed into a corner by external, human forces.
lanfeust6•4h ago
"damaging", in no quantifiable way whatsoever. It's just the euphemism treadmill at work, nothing more.
tweetle_beetle•4h ago
I would say it's not the treadmill at work in this case. It's not simply a replacement.

The article linked by the parent comment explains it well and references plenty of considered material. But the tldr is that committing suicide aligns with an active criminal/immoral act, while dying by suicide is a factual cause of death with many possible causes.

Consider how people would like your death, or the death of a loved one, described by others. And if you can't, maybe consider how others might be affected.

lanfeust6•27m ago
> But the tldr is that committing suicide aligns with an active criminal/immoral act, while dying by suicide is a factual cause of death with many possible causes.

The projections are doing the work here. Colloquially today what's understood is that "commit" merely means they did the deed. People can judge that to be immoral or not regardless; most people don't, except through the lens of religion.

They might judge it to be the wrong choice, as I surely do, and I don't think it helps to diminish agency as though suicide is an inevitability following any given circumstance.

xbryanx•2h ago
> in no quantifiable way whatsoever

You may disagree with my assertion, but there has been considerable research into the role of media and reporting in suicide, indicating that contagion is real and that words matter when reporting on these issues.

Source: https://reportingonsuicide.org/research/

lanfeust6•25m ago
That words matter is why I'm in opposition, as this diminishes agency in people.

Today I would say that framing suicide as "immoral" in secular society is banal and has no traction, but most, excepting certain circumstances, would suggest it is a bad choice. That surely follows if you as well as I would try to talk an able person out of suicide.

I don't think it helps to diminish agency as though suicide is an inevitability following tough circumstances. That's the message I am getting from the euphemism treadmill game, and I reject it.

The message should be that you can go through hell and recover, and you still have a choice. And granted there's always nature vs nurture; just as we are not entirely the product of our environment, the environment does shape us. But it's not all-or-nothing.

dogleash•4h ago
edit: lol wut? The more I think about this the less it makes sense. The stigma of suicide is from the societal attitude that it's wrong and you should never do it. Using a verb isn't the bit that tells everyone it is wrong. If you want to remove the stigma take away all the signs for 998 and perfunctory statements that help is available, and replace them all with "do it. no balls, do it."

Isn't the stigma desired anyway? It keeps people from going through with it. That's why society deliberately creates and actively cultivates the stigma.

I doubt removing "committed" removes any stigma to seek help. What sucks about suicidality is that everyone is so sterile about it. Removing the word is more of that. IMO the sterility discourages the not-yet-at-rock-bottom suicidal from reaching out.

My pre-edit comment was that just about sterility and linking to: "Envying the dead: SkyKing in memoriam" https://eggreport.substack.com/p/rehosting-envying-the-dead-...

johnorourke•5h ago
"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.
tjwebbnorfolk•5h ago
I say this as someone whose father killed himself when I was in 5th grade:

The "victims" who suffer after a suicide are the living, not the dead. These kinds of "modernizations" are transparent PC nonsense made up by well-intentioned do-gooders who have no idea how to represent the interests of other people who have a lived experience that they don't understand.

The person is dead either way. There's literally no way to sugarcoat this fact. We'd rather you just speak in plain, honest language than trying to make it sound less bad somehow.

stirfish•5h ago
That's a really hard thing to go through. I'm sorry you had to bear that as a fifth grader.

It's possible that both you and your dad are victims in different ways.

CrazyStat•5h ago
What makes “committed suicide” any more plain or honest than “died by suicide”?
tjwebbnorfolk•5h ago
I don't have a big issue with that particular phrase itself. Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens.

But really it's the transparent and ham-handed attempts by some others to smooth over the sharp edges of reality merely by re-phrasing how things are written.

People generally don't want pity, but these re-phrasings accomplish nothing other than to make clear that one person feels sorry for another.

watwut•4h ago
> Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here.

No, passive voice is not in general designed to conceal or obscure the actor. Especially not in the sentence here.

There were valid similar complains about crime reporting. But the language there was different. The sentence "The innocent McKay family was inadvertently affected by this enforcement operation" is trying to hide culpability. We can discuss that. These two are incomparable:

- A deputy-involved shooting occurred. (Ok, we are avoiding the actor. We do not know who was shooting.)

- A person died by Suicide. (Clear to anyone who done what.)

haswell•3h ago
> Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly.

No one is an island. We’re all deeply intertwined/interconnected. We’re the sum total of our lived experiences and without a doubt some have lived far more challenging lives than others and are influenced by factors that would lead just about anyone down a dark path.

The grief felt by those left behind is the result of that aforementioned interconnectedness.

Getting back to the quoted bit, isn’t this a bit like saying “attributing grief to anyone other than the person experiencing it is oxymoronic”?

My point is not to diminish the impact on those left behind in any way. Clearly this is a traumatic event that causes excruciating grief.

But I think we also need to be honest about the environmental factors that lead to suicide. Hopelessness is one of the large causes. If there are systemic reasons causing people to feel hopeless, and if those systemic problems could theoretically be changed/improved, and such improvement lowered the suicide rate, there’s a strong case to be made that the systemic factors share the responsibility.

> Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens.

I don’t think it’s a given. Clearly some lives are far more complicated than others. There exists a subset of people for whom that complication will become an insurmountable problem. Often those people have been traumatized, or have never learned the tools necessary to work through their feelings.

Some people are bullied into killing themselves. Should that be attributed wholly to the person who was bullied?

reliabilityguy•4h ago
Because the latter implies some external attribute to it?
wat10000•2h ago
That's what makes the latter more accurate.
octopoc•4h ago
It assigns agency to the person who died.

Think about it this way: I have relative who is vegan, so she has been trying to convince me to kill myself for many years now.

I can still choose whether I do it though, and obviously I chose not to so far, although during COVID I didn’t have much other social interaction, so I nearly went through with it.

I had agency throughout though. I’m not dead because I chose not to go through with it.

That’s the difference.

lokeg•3h ago
What?
octopoc•3h ago
Agency is the ability to act. If someone dies against their own will, they don’t have agency, which is why we don’t use language like “they committed their own death” to refer to such instances.
marliechiller•3h ago
whats veganism got to do with comitting suicide?
octopoc•3h ago
Many vegans think everyone else is evil/demonic for eating meat. “Meat is murder” etc etc. So the natural conclusion to that is, according to several vegans I know, that everyone who eats meat should be forced to either stop being a mass murderer or kill themselves.

Keep in mind there was a point where I was vegan, I know several vegans, so I know what I’m talking about.

They’re not shy about it either—look up That Vegan Teacher on YouTube for relatively middle-of-the-road vegan behavior in action.

nosefrog•59m ago
I was vegan for 7 years, one of my vegan friends had the opinion that human hospitals should be banned and only animal hospitals should be allowed.
wat10000•2h ago
Comparing nagging from a relative to wrongful prosecution is asinine. You might as well say that you had heartburn and it didn't kill you, so what's with all these people dying from heart attacks?
kelnos•1h ago
The latter implies that suicide just happened to the person, like they got hit by a bus.

The former correctly attributes the action to the person who killed themselves. Certainly the motivations and causes that drive people to suicide are complex, but ultimately it is a choice the person makes.

"Committed" is perhaps not the best word, since it's associated with crimes (and suicide is not a crime in many places anymore), but it's at least more active.

JdeBP•5h ago
For context: Suicide was a crime in the United Kingdom until 1961.

* https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/contents

* https://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296

lanfeust6•4h ago
Except colloquially no one today thinks the word has any bearing on whether the victim looks bad. It just means they're responsible for the act.

I guess some people take comfort in the idea that suicide is thrust on people and they take no responsibility for their actions.

lostmsu•4h ago
This seems to be a common topic in the current pendulum swing.
wat10000•2h ago
Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves.

It follows from that fact that if someone kills themselves, at least one of those things was not true. And those things can and often are thrust on people, or at least occur against the will of the person.

In this case, a bad situation was thrust on a whole bunch of people, and it ended up killing some of them.

lanfeust6•33m ago
> Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves.

Correct. This has no bearing.

> it ended up killing some of them.

No, and it's irresponsible and unhelpful to act like agency and choice is not part of the equation. As if to say that basically everyone chooses the same way (euthanasia) in the face of terminal illness, or depression.

Tautologically, if you want to convey that help is out there and that a better life is possible, then you're saying people have a choice to make.

mannykannot•5h ago
While there is no real doubt that most, if not all, of these suicides were a direct consequence of the appalling way this monumental failure and its investigation was handled, reporting the news responsibly has become a minefield in which any deviation from what is strictly known is liable to be exploited by those who do not want their role in events to become public.

As you want to call a spade a spade, can we agree that the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't, is undoubtedly among those who are morally (if not legally) culpable to a considerable extent?

noisy_boy•4h ago
> Perhaps also on the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't

I don't think you needed to ask for agreement.

mannykannot•3h ago
Partly on account of the "perhaps" in the original, and partly because I have seen (elsewhere) "just doing his job" defenses.

In corner cases, culpability for uncertain expertise can be a tricky issue - you may recall the case of the Italian geologists, a few years back, indicted for minimizing the risk of an earthquake shortly before one occurred - but the case here seems pretty clear-cut (again, I'm speaking morally, not legally.)

PaulKeeble•4h ago
No question, they should be tried for corporate manslaughter and criminal enterprise for the cover up along with all their management. They should all be serving very long sentences, they killed many people with their lies.
mike_hearn•4h ago
It's quite possible he will end up going to prison, and absolutely, that would be the right outcome. It's hard to know what was going through his mind as he made that decision.
hinkley•3h ago
He should be charged with perjury and sued by the families.
foldr•4h ago
> To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice

“X died by suicide” is a sentence in the active voice. “Die” is an intransitive verb and cannot be passivized in English.

slacktivism123•3h ago
Please don't do this kind of tangential grammar nitpicking here. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less.
foldr•40m ago
I’m not nitpicking the poster’s grammar, I’m nitpicking the claim about the grammatical structure of a particular sentence that’s the factual basis of their criticism of the article.
rolandog•4h ago
> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight.

These still occur on modern touchscreen laptops (work-provided Dell Latitude 7450 and mandated to use Windows with a lot of restrictions). It's not an everyday issue, but a once a month one.

Other than that, completely agree with your assessment: the ruining of those lives was a completely avoidable tragedy that was grossly mishandled.

whycome•3h ago
Arguably, it happens today on a modern iPhone capacitive screen. I've had issues where the UI performs a "bait and switch" and swaps a target that I inadvertently press. ios26 is worse because of some lag at certain times.
louthy•4h ago
> massive deep state cover-up

Let’s not use conspiracy-theory language.

It was a coverup by Fujitsu and The Post Office.

MPs and ministers (part of the state) used their parliamentary privilege to expose it after the campaign by the postmasters brought the issue to light.

No ‘deep state’ conspiracy, it’s just an arse covering cover-up (pared with outright incompetence) which had particularly devastating consequences.

Joeboy•4h ago
"Deep state" is, or at least to be, a perfectly respectable political term for bodies that retain power across changing governments.
louthy•4h ago
Or in other words: the state. No ‘deep’ needed unless you’re trying to be emotive. Fujitsu is not part of the state and although the Post Office is owned by the state, it’s a stand-alone company.

> “Perfectly respectable”

Maybe in some fringe circles, but this term is certainly attached to a huge amount extreme propaganda and conspiracy that attempts to undermine western democracy and institutions.

Joeboy•4h ago
The point, I think, is that that The Post Office acted like part of the state, notably in that they acted like an unconstrained branch of the CPS in bringing prosecutions against thousands of people.

> Maybe in some fringe circles

I would say the fringe circles co-opted it over the last couple of decades, and the term's obviously become heavily associated with them in some people's minds (eg. yours). But it's an older term than that.

Edit: Why would the loons have adopted it, if it was such a disreputable term?

louthy•4h ago
> The point, I think, is that that The Post Office acted like part of the state

I agree. The are part of the state. They are a standalone company, but wholly owned by the state. But other aspects of the state (eventually) reacted to the injustice: MPs, select committees, ministers, the public inquiry, and hopefully next the legal system as some of these people should be in jail.

> But it's an older term than that.

Fine, I’m happy to accept that. Just like I’m happy to accept that R&B has nothing to do with BB King any more (well, actuality I still struggle with that).

Definitions and usage change. The current usage is the one that matters. Not the legacy definition.

When the original poster wrote “massive deep state cover-up” I think the implication is that shadowy figures throughout the state are pulling cover-up levers, when it was one privately owned company and one publicly owned company. The rest of the state moved (albeit slowly) to expose this and make it right.

Joeboy•3h ago
I think your struggle with shifting meanings is a worthwhile one. At least, if you said BB King was an R&B artist, and somebody tried to correct you, you'd be within your rights to stand your ground.

But particularly with regard to politics, I don't think you should let go of useful ideas because arseholes pollute them. At least, it feels uncomfortably like letting the arseholes win, to me.

PaulKeeble•4h ago
The post office is a quasi quango, they are technically private but they maintain state functions like the ability to prosecute their post masters. So despite its private ownership it is a partially a state body and in the way in which it caused these deaths its the state quasi quango function that did it.
louthy•4h ago
Not arguing against that at all. It is a function of the state. My issue was purely about the emotive language of “deep state”, which is used (in my experience) to delegitimise all aspects of the state.

The legacy of the Post Office having prosecution powers was clearly a big part of the problem.

some_random•4h ago
I know the term "deep state" is now extremely political and you've only heard it in the context of conspiracy theorists but it's a real term that is completely appropriate here.
watwut•4h ago
> please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened.

I mean, common. Everyone knows what suicide is or means. No, it does not make it sound like an act of God for anyone who is above A1 level of English.

dcow•4h ago
It’s still suicide. The wrongfully imprisoned can be acquitted. That’s part of the argument against the death penalty: if justice is imperfect then don’t take actions that are permanent. You can’t classify every instance of miscarriage of justice as state murder. I really don’t see the issue you’re trying to raise. It’s more problematic to invent new language because it feels yucky than to be precise and accurate in our reporting.
the8472•4h ago
We are incapable of returning life-time taken. False imprisonment is still racking up centimorts instead of delivering 1 mort.
some_random•4h ago
I don't think they're arguing that the headline should be "13 UK postmasters murdered by the state", just that the extremely passive "died by suicide" lacks context and largely leaves out the UK Post Office's role in their death. I think they would prefer some thing along the lines of "At Least 13 People Killed Themselves After False Accusations From U.K. Post Office, Report Says".
dcow•4h ago
I’m fine with that. And I agree with the sentiment, just not the conclusion that we should be reporting these as not-suicide. If the original comment was indeed that tempered then I have no issue.
sitkack•3h ago
It is the passive voice, not the word suicide that is the issue.
rpdillon•3h ago
It's the lack of clarity in what happened. I think the rephrasing mike suggested is much clearer:

> The postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system.

That's just better writing!

vintermann•4h ago
> You can’t classify every instance of miscarriage of justice as state murder.

It's literally what we call it in Norway. In English it's compared to miscarriage (i.e. spontaneous abortion), "miscarriage of justice". Here we call it murder of justice (justismord), whether anyone actually died or not.

I do think it gets the seriousness across, and the focus on it as a deliberate act, rather than an accident as in English. Some people actually made a deliberate act to let innocent people take the blame.

dcow•4h ago
Interesting.

> Some people actually made a deliberate act to let innocent people take the blame.

And those people are at fault and should be criminally prosecuted for the harm they caused.

maweki•4h ago
The horizon post office scandal is the first thing I taught in my "database design" course, to show that we're not creating self-serving academic exercises. We are creating systems that affect people's lives.

I try to give the legal and ethical perspectives. These systems should be auditable and help and not hurt people.

sitkack•4h ago
Or, if you are designing software to kill people, that you actually do a good job.

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cia-allegedly-bought-flawe...

barbazoo•2h ago
OT but what a shit site that is. A third of the page is taken up by a “best prime day deals” countdown banner. What a consumerist piece of shit website.
sitkack•2h ago
You need adblock
mike_hearn•4h ago
That's good to hear. I'm sure the story makes an impact!
KingOfCoders•4h ago
There is no "deep state", just the state. Calling things "the deep state" tries to partition the state in two parts, a good one and a bad one.

There is also no "deep Amazon" or "deep Meta". Amazon is Amazon, Meta is Meta and the state is the state. People working for or representing the state have their own agenda, have their cliques, have their CYA like people everywhere else. And the state as an organization prioritizes survival and self defense above all other goals it might have.

mike_hearn•4h ago
Fair. I use the term to refer to the parts of the state that are somehow buried deep, beyond most people's awareness. In this case the problems started with a government contractor, and were then covered up by people inside the post office. It wasn't a top-down conspiracy of politicians, or of civil servants following their orders.
pjc50•4h ago
Indeed. "Deep" is a weasel word. "State" is all the operations of governance which don't change when the government changes.

However, the state is not a monolith. It's an organization of all sorts of sub-organizations run by individuals with their own agendas. They have names, faces, and honors: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67925304

(The honors systems is deeply problematic because about half of them are handed out to insiders for complicity in god knows what and the other half are handed out to celebrities as cover for the first half)

tw04•4h ago
I'm not sure that's really fair. Within any organization there are subgroups. For instance there was an entire branch of AT&T that was dedicated to illegally spying on Americans for the NSA.

Most employees of AT&T had no idea it was even going on, so to lump every AT&T employee into the same batch of "you're bad because th company you work for was doing X" when they had no idea the company was doing X isn't really fair.

By the same vein, Stephen Miller trying to round up and cage innocent civilians just trying to live their life is a very different part of the government than Suzanne at NASA who's trying to better the future of mankind. To act as if there's no distinguishing between the two is just silly.

Whether you have an issue with the specific term "deep state" I'll leave be. But please don't try to oversimplify large organizations. The higher up the chain the more responsibility you can place for what the organization as a whole does, but the reverse isn't true when speaking outside of their specific area of ownership.

KingOfCoders•3h ago
Me: "have their cliques" You: "I'm not sure that's really fair. Within any organization there are subgroups."

"you're bad because th[e] company you work for was doing X"

Which I didn't write.

All the other parts about Suzanne, also not what I wrote.

"But please don't try to oversimplify large organizations."

I didn't, I feel your comment misrepresents what I've said.

"The higher up the chain the more responsibility you can place for what the organization as a whole does"

No. Al Capone killed no one himself. People did that for him. They share the responsibility. My boss made me do it is not an excuse.

exiguus•3h ago
Deep State makes kind of sense here, because the U.K. Post Office, had there own Law Enforcement. They can act like the state in several ways. I think the correct term is "Private prosecution". And as fare as I understand it, the U.K. Post Office was able to have there own judge.
foldr•1h ago
No, the Post Office doesn't have its own "law enforcement" (if you mean something like a police force) or its own judges.

Any company has the right to bring a private prosecution under UK law, and this was the basis for the prosecutions in question. It just means that the company pays for some of the costs involved.

Whether or not private prosecutions should be allowed is certainly a legitimate topic of discussion. Let's not muddy the waters with misinformation about the Post Office having some kind of parallel police and courts system. It just doesn't.

nwienert•3h ago
There’s incredible utility to the term.

It refers to people in the government with a lot of power and little public exposure, and perhaps some indication of using their power against the will of the general public, and yes there’s tons of these people, and it’s quite good to have the public generally worried about them.

American political history is littered with deep state plots that turned out to be true - Iraq war being a big recent one, the insurance policy FBI agents another.

tokai•2h ago
Iraq war was definitely not the work of any deep state, if you follow your definition. It was pushed by the president and his government, not faceless bureaucrats.
nwienert•2h ago
Certainly the pressure on them and the “intel” they saw on WMD was in part the work of the deep state, that the president was captured by them is sort of the point.
esseph•1h ago
You've got it backwards, at least in your description.

They went after the intel they wanted to find to justify their position. It didn't matter if it was real or true, it just needed to come from the intelligence apparatus.

michael1999•1h ago
That's completely backwards.

The CIA was very clear that there was nothing there, and the publicly appointed leadership (Rumsfeld, Feith, Cheney, etc) badgered them until they gave in and made some wishy-washy statement that Powell could pretend was real.

The war was led from the top - Sec Def and VP. That Bush was a moron and appointed liars to Sec Def and VP is on him. Cheney and Rumsfeld had a long history of making things up, going back to the 70s.

nwienert•11m ago
[delayed]
mr_toad•1h ago
> There’s incredible utility to the term.

It’s a red flag, so there’s that.

fifteen1506•3h ago
Surely the engineer wasn't acting alone, lying in court without some inside pressure?
dagmx•3h ago
Well said. I really wish we had a better word for someone who is bullied into suicide. It’s tantamount to manslaughter imho.

Recently, a snark/bullying community on Reddit resulted in the suicide of their target (a woman responsible for rescuing foxes).

That kind of targeting and bullying is horrific for any individual to process, let alone people who don’t have the press teams and training that celebrities do.

ImHereToVote•3h ago
This sets a bad precedent. There is a wide gamut of emotional resilience in people. What is a funny insult to one person, can be rope-fuel to another.

Would you want to be called that if you make a light jab at a middle aged bald guy?

koolala•3h ago
Sounds unrealistic they would blame it all on one remark like that.

I'd be more afraid people would kill themselves just to get retribution on their tormentors and it would increase suicides.

belter•3h ago
It's a surprising take to blame developers and software development for what is a prime example of corruption within the UK establishment, an uncaring and incompetent court system, and the lying senior managers of the UK Post Office. The faults were known and this is a case of cover-up.

Software development was merely an accessory to the crime in this case.

aenis•31m ago
Read the book, if you havent already. The senior technical staff was actively obfuscating and lying. Developers knew the system had synchronization issues, operations knew as well, as they were apparently routinely doing manual data fixes in production. Senior engineering staff are the most to blame. They messed up and then covered up. The fact that their management covered up some more can be partially excused by technical illiteracy.
belter•8m ago
That explanation based on lies by the tech staff, is another variation of the Volkswagen explanation that the emissions scandal, were just some low level engineers.

The essence of this story is how the UK establishment can lie, and be corrupt to levels that will shame big time criminals.

[1] "...Vennells was the CEO of Post Office Ltd during the latter part of the Post Office scandal, which involved more than 900 subpostmasters being wrongly convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud between 1999 and 2015 because of shortfalls at their branches that were in fact errors of the Horizon accounting software used by the Post Office.Thousands of subpostmasters paid for shortfalls caused by Horizon and/or had their contracts terminated. The actions of the Post Office caused the loss of jobs, bankruptcy, family breakdown, criminal convictions, prison sentences and at least four suicides. In total, over 4,000 subpostmasters would eventually become eligible for compensation..."

"...In 2013, Post Office Limited hired forensic accounting firm Second Sight, headed by Ron Warmington, to investigate the Horizon software losses. Warmington discovered the system was flawed and faulty, but Vennells was unhappy with Warmington's report and terminated their contract. Prior to her role as CEO, Vennells was the Chief Operating Officer of Post Office Ltd, a position in which – according to the evidence of the then CEO, David Smith – she had responsibility for management of the "operational use" of the Horizon software...."

"...During the case, the Post Office's conduct under Vennells's leadership was described as an instance of "appalling and shameful behaviour..."

"...During her testimony, Vennells consistently stated she was unaware of the facts or, when confronted with documents that showed she had been made aware of them, said she had not understood them..."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells

marcosdumay•2h ago
> Horizon is the case that should replace Therac-25 as a study in what can go wrong if software developers screw up.

Hum, no. Horizon had nothing to do with problems of software development.

It's a case of unaccountable judges, lying attorneys, and the entire police system acting in a conspiracy to hide information and gaslight the society at large. The fact that there is a software error there somewhere isn't relevant at all.

Vegenoid•26m ago
> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight

I think there’s still a lesson to be learned here about computers needing to be locked when not in use. I find it utterly bizarre how many experienced technical employees will leave their computer unlocked when they step away from it for extended periods of time.

Horffupolde•5h ago
Suicide is a verb and result by itself. Would the author also say “he died by murder”?
ellisv•5h ago
They are simplify avoiding using the word "committed" using a well accepted alternative because of the connotation with criminal behavior.

But no they would say "died by homicide" not "died by murder".

docdeek•5h ago
Would they not say "was killed" and so allow "killed himself/herself"?
Tostino•5h ago
Maybe "were driven to suicide by..." to properly describe the situation?
cjs_ac•5h ago
This trend for commenting on news articles with nothing to say but a complaint about the wording of the headline is tedious. The right to free speech does not impose a responsibility to say something about everything you see.
thoroughburro•5h ago
Your argument is that the wording of headlines is so meaningless as to always be beneath comment? Seems silly.
bendigedig•5h ago
I think you're missing the point by a mile. The point isn't some tedious debate over grammar; it's about the choice of language that perpetuates the idea that suicide is a tragedy that happens passively 'to people' in some kind of tragic, medicalised, incomprehensible way which is severed from any socio-political context.

In this case, these people were driven to suicide. I would argue that those responsible for the Horizon scandal are guilty of at minimum manslaughter of these poor people.

cjs_ac•4h ago
It's a headline. It's not supposed to convey any nuance, it's just there to encourage you to read the article.

I agree that the wording isn't ideal, and I agree that the headline fails to capture the nuance of the circumstances that lead to suicide, but I disagree that subeditors who write headlines need to encapsulate that nuance. That's what the article is for.

CoastalCoder•5h ago
Language evolves, like it or not.

In 2025 English, suicide is most commonly a noun.

whycome•3h ago
There’s probably a near future where “unalived” becomes an unironic and accepted descriptor.
giingyui•5h ago
They have unalived themselves.
foldr•4h ago
> Suicide is a verb

No it isn’t. You can’t say “He suicided.”

arrowsmith•3h ago
> Suicide is a verb

Not in English. Although it's a verb in many languages, which is why "he suicided" is a common ESL mistake.

throw_m239339•5h ago
What a horrible story.

What can you do when you know you are innocent but the court trusts the software more than it trusts people? And you are asked to repay something you never stole which off course leads to your financial ruin/divorce/... your kids bullied because you as a parent were deemed a thief... Imagine your spouse leaving you because of something you didn't even do...

Someone absolutely needs to go to jail over this. This kind of software is supposed to go through a lengthy compliance and certification process, so clearly whatever person put their signature on that "certified" document is responsible for these death.

throw0101c•5h ago
The four-part mini-series Mr Bates vs The Post Office is worth checking out:

> A faulty IT system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of subpostmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates, forms the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. The prosecutions and convictions are later ruled a miscarriage of justice at the conclusion of the Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd judicial case in 2019.[4][5]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

ThisNameIsTaken•5h ago
What is particularly striking about the scandal is the impact of the mini-series. From what I understand (as a foreigner to the UK) is that it was the mini-series that sparked national interest in the case. Without it, those involved would still be in a bureaucratic and legal nightmare, in which all institutions rejected their innocence claims, and hardly anyone would have been held accountable. See also the "Impact" section on the linked wiki page.

It leaves me wondering how the situation would have been if it would have been a (dramaturgically) 'bad' series. It might have left those involved even worse of.

duncans•4h ago
It's worth pointing out that Mr Bates vs The Post Office screened in early 2024. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry was set up in 2020/2021 and the public hearings started in 2023.

So it may have looked like "it was TV what done it" but the wheels of justice were turning long before the show came out.

penguin_booze•2h ago
Wheels; justice: all these are just weasel words. Litigation is an exclusive privilege of the rich. And prison, of the poor(er).
PaulKeeble•4h ago
The people are still waiting for their money back and their names to be cleared. The scandal continues.

I first saw news about this scandal and the early evidence of wrong doing by the Post Office in 2008.

whycome•3h ago
> It leaves me wondering how the situation would have been if it would have been a (dramaturgically) 'bad' series. It might have left those involved even worse of.

Holy shit. You might see big corps like the post office fund big dramas as a way to sway public opinion. A tool in the pr playbook.

varispeed•3h ago
There are other scandals in the UK, like IR35 that basically prevents worker owned businesses from making profit, then resulting cottage industry of parasitic "umbrella companies" and tumbling economy. But directly affected people are easily generalised as those with broader shoulders so the public couldn't care less if they cannot run their little businesses. Meanwhile big consultancies that lobbied for it are getting minted on public sector contracts, they have very much a monopoly now. Things are more expensive and shittier. Oh and then Boriswave - as if captive services market wasn't enough for big corporations - they also got to import the cheapest available workers instead of hiring locals.
throw0101c•3h ago
> From what I understand (as a foreigner to the UK) is that it was the mini-series that sparked national interest in the case.

The case was done with by 2019:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_%26_Others_v_Post_Office...

The mini-series aired in 2024. Perhaps it was a bit more obscure pre-airing, but things were sorted out already.

SCdF•58m ago
Sort of.

We were in the middle of an election cycle. If you were paying attention you were aware of the scandal slowly grinding its way through legal slop, but most people probably weren't that clued in (as per normal).

But that mini-series threw it into the current public consciousness, and so suddenly it wasn't just the judicial system working through it but the Tories now gave a shit (briefly), because they thought showing that they care might save them (it didn't).

evanb•4h ago
I learned a lot from The Great Post Office Trial podcast by BBC Radio 4

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-post-office-...

lboc•5h ago
A good summary from the UK IT trade publication that broke the story:

https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-s...

Not sure if this requires sign-in/subscription, so apologies in advance. I did neither and have access to the full article.

mrkramer•5h ago
I thought British legal system and computer forensics were serious but this case is just a travesty of justice.
closewith•5h ago
The British legal system is and always has been a litany of injustices dressed up in formal attire. To be avoided at all costs.
mathiaspoint•5h ago
That mess inspired the American legal system though, which is probably one of if not the best in the world.

IMO common law is still better than case law at least.

closewith•5h ago
> That mess inspired the American legal system though, which is probably one of if not the best in the world.

Poe's Law strikes again.

The American legal system isn't even the best legal system in the US.

nusaru•4h ago
> in the US

Huh? What does this mean? Are there other systems in the US that I’m not aware of?

closewith•4h ago
Yes, the indigenous domestic nations.
renewiltord•3h ago
Indeed, and science can’t account for the wonders of indigenous ways of thinking either.
whycome•3h ago
How dare you. Do you want to get sued?

/s

zapzupnz•4h ago
I’m curious to know how American legal system is better than any other country’s. From the outside looking in, it looks just as broken if not worse.

You may have been kidding, but I’m sure someone will genuinely think so and have some decent arguments for it.

tialaramex•4h ago
My favourite inspiration goes the opposite direction. The United States has this Supreme Court, a final Court of Appeal, politically independent and empowered even to decide that the government's actions are illegal. Sounds great.

The UK had this rather antique thing called the "Lords of Appeal in Ordinary" aka "Law Lords" who were in theory just some Lords (ie people who are arbitrarily in the upper chamber of the Parliament, maybe because their dad was) but served the same purpose as a final court of appeal in practice and so had for a very long time all been Judges because duh, of course they should be judges, that's a job for a judge, just make some judges Lords and forget about it. They met in some committee room in the Palace of Westminster, because they're Lords and that's where the Lords are, right? So, there was practical independence, but the appearance was not here.

About 15 years ago now, the dusty Law Lords were in the way of an attempted reform of parliament. A Supreme Court sounds like a good idea, so the UK got a Supreme Court. It fixed up a nice building nearby, gave the exact same people a new job title and sent them over the road. Done.

But the UK version does what it says on the tin. It said on the tin they're politically independent. In the US of course this "independence" is bullshit, but in the UK since there's already a politically independent process to pick judges the same process continues for the Supreme Court. So a Prime Minister might hate the supreme court but they can't pick the judges.

PaulRobinson•4h ago
The Prime Minister can influence earlier in the chain though: they get to approve appointments to the Lords as a whole. Who then gets appointed to positions within the Lords is none of their business, but they can tip the scale if they need to.

It's actually for this reason that for hundreds of years until the early 21st century there was real concern about having a Catholic prime minister. There was even hand-wringing over PMs of other denominations, but the history of Catholicism in the UK in particular raised concern. Why? The PM has final approval of the Lords Spiritual - the bishops from the Church of England who are there to provide a protestant spiritual dimension to all debates before that House.

It's allegedly for this reason that Tony Blair (married to a Catholic) waited until after he left office to convert. I think it was either Brown or Cameron who then got the law explicitly changed to not bar Catholics and other religions to serve as PM.

tialaramex•2h ago
The Prime Minister could, in principle, instruct the Queen (this whole arrangement was abolished before Brian got his mum's old job as we'll see shortly) not to issue the Letters Patent for a new Lord, but Parliament has explicitly laid out the rules for this, so, he is in contempt of Parliament. This seems like an unwise course of action as of course he serves only at their pleasure and even Sir Keir, who has an unusually large majority, has discovered that if they don't like what he proposes they can just ignore him.

None of this matters for the Supreme Court, and thus for about 15 years now. It's true that the Supreme Court's justices are made life peers (its original members were of course already peers having previously constituted the Law Lords, but new members are granted a peerage) - however that's merely a convention, if you don't make them a life peer it makes no difference to their job on the court, it just makes you look petty. I don't even think it's contempt now, because the law saying they should be elevated was repealed - unless the new law also says they must be given a peerage when they get the job, I glanced through it and didn't find that, but it's a huge law because making a Supreme Court was not its main purpose.

penguin_booze•2h ago
Politically independent?! Between an extremely dry sense of humour and sarcasm, I can't tell which.
LtWorf•1h ago
Isn't the american legal system the one who famously killed Sacco and Vanzetti?
sparsely•4h ago
Indeed. The goal of the British legal system is to appear serious. Justice is an occasional byproduct.
penguin_booze•2h ago
Just say British system; 'Legal' is extraneous. But boy does it appear serious.
tialaramex•4h ago
Compared to?

I mean, it's no Norway, but to remind you the United States, which has continued just straight up executing people who may not have committed any crime, is currently trying to make some of its own citizens stateless, then ship them to a foreign oubliette. Russia doesn't bother with courts and people who are out of favour just have deadly "accidents" there.

mystraline•4h ago
The stuffy 17th c clothes and powdered wigs were a warning that you are entering the Clown Zone (not the Twilight Zone).
duncans•4h ago
The thing here is that the Post Office as the "victim" could also act as its own investigator and prosecutor, due to historical reasons going back to the 17th century when it effectively functioned as part of the state and as such, had the authority to investigate and prosecute crimes related to its operations (like mail theft or fraud).
jekwoooooe•3h ago
British people won’t even acknowledge that their grooming gangs are 99% Pakistani what do you expect? Their judicial system seems to be collapsing from within
cedws•5h ago
The failing is as much with the court as it is with Fujitsu. Why did they blindly accept Horizon’s data as evidence? What if the computer said the Queen stole all the money and ran off to Barbados, would they have thrown her in jail? Why was the output of a black box, which may as well have been a notebook Fujitsu could have written anything they wanted into, treated as gospel?
rwmj•5h ago
The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary (and getting that evidence is basically impossible for the individuals being charged who were post office workers, not computer experts, and the source code was a trade secret).

This might change, partly in response to this case: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/use-of-evid...

Quite interesting article about this: https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-presumption-t...

imtringued•4h ago
The emperor has no clothes. Oxford is the worlds AI Safety research hub and yet they didn't think about campaigning to overturn a law which negates their entire reason for existing?
PaulRobinson•4h ago
This happened a long time before the current resurgence in AI.
silon42•2h ago
Imagine how much will "machine is right and can't be changed" happen with AI.
nightpool•3h ago
Oxford is the world's what? If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.
jen20•3h ago
Arguments made towards right-wing government (which the UK had for the past decade) from higher education are unlikely to be well received. Perhaps somewhat by Cameron, certainly not in the post-Brexit idiocracy of May, Johnson, Truss or Sunak.
noisy_boy•4h ago
> The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary

That is just mind bogglingly stupid - who the hell are the idiots who wrote a law like that? Any of them wrote a line of code in their life?

whycome•3h ago
Isn’t it a similar case in the USA where intoxication breath test computers are similarly obscured from scrutiny? People have argued that they have a right to “face their accuser” and see the source code only to have that request denied. So, black box.
BobaFloutist•2h ago
Breathalyzers aren't typically considered sufficient evidence in of themselves to convict (or exonerate), iirc many PDs have a policy of treating a breathalyzer hit as probable cause more than anything and then either they throw you in the drunk tank if you don't demand a blood test to verify, or, if they want to actually prosecute you, they get a warrant for a blood test.
SoftTalker•2h ago
AIUI breath test only establishes probable cause. If you fail a breath test you are taken for a blood draw.

Breath test results are routinely challenged (sometimes successfully) by demanding records showing that the device has been tested and calibrated according to the required schedule.

arrowsmith•3h ago
> who wrote a law

That's not what "common law" means.

michael1999•1h ago
It's incremental, and goes back to things like clocks.

Imagine a witness says "I saw him go into the bank at 11:20. I know the time because I looked up at the clock tower, and it said 11:20".

Defence argues "The clock must have been wrong. My client was at lunch with his wife by 11:15".

Clocks are simple enough that we can presume them to correct, unless you can present evidence that they are unreliable.

This presumption was extended to ever-more complicated machines over the years. And then (fatally) this presumption was extended to the rise of PROGRAMMABLE computers. It is the programmability of computers that makes them unreliable. The actual computer hardware rarely makes an error that isn't obvious as an error.

The distinction of software and hardware is a relatively recent concept for something as old as common law.

ginko•1h ago
Maybe Napoleon should have conquered Britain after all.
mystraline•4h ago
Governments should have access to all the source of code they buy licenses to (and provided at sale), as a precondition of selling to a government.

When these sorts of things happen, the source can be subpoena'd with the relevant legal tool, and reviewed appropriately.

Why governments don't do this is beyond me. It greatly limits liability of gov procurement, and puts the liability on the companies selling such goods.

varispeed•3h ago
> Why governments don't do this is beyond me.

Brown envelopes most likely and de facto non functioning SFO.

gnfargbl•2h ago
Governments don't do get source code for the same reason as every other customer doesn't get source code: software vendors are incentivized to refuse the request.

Why are the vendors so incentivized? Well, coming back to Fujitsu and the Post Office, the answer is that refusing to share the source was worth about a billion dollars: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgm8lmz1xk1o

flir•40m ago
Then they shouldn't get the contract.

I hope lessons are learned, but I doubt it.

daveoc64•1h ago
Governments (certainly in the UK) aren't willing to pay enough to make this work for vendors.

An escrow approach is quite common to protect the government in the event of a vendor going bankrupt or similar.

bauble•2h ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/
cedws•2h ago
I was not aware of this. Wow.

I hope they're taking a hard look at past cases where they've done this.

masfuerte•2h ago
No chance. The article concludes with the depressing statement that the government has no plans to reform the law, so the injustices will continue. They certainly won't be spending money on digging up old injustices.
mbonnet•1h ago
> There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary

This is horrifying. I presume software is working incorrectly until proven otherwise.

blipvert•56m ago
Part of the answer is that the Post Office had (has?) special legal status in that it can prosecute cases by itself - no need to present a convincing case to the CPS like the police do.

Many people were scared into pleading guilty just to avoid the upfront legal costs and the ruinous fines if contesting and found guilty (“the computer is always right”).

Often the PO knew that they didn’t have much of a case but just used their special status to bully them into submission.

foldr•24m ago
This is a myth as far as I’ve been able to determine. The prosecutions were ordinary private prosecutions. The Post Office didn’t need any kind of special legal status in order to prosecute.
RedShift1•5h ago
What was the actual bug in the software that caused the accounting errors?
renewiltord•3h ago
From the wording of the description of the programmer who failed to debug and labeled it user error it appears that it is fairly typical Accenture-grade software where there is no single bug so much as the program itself approximates the correct result.

Their data model appears to have been akin to having a single accumulator sum up things rather than to use something like double-entry bookkeeping or an account graph so that the source of errors could be traced.

It’s less “a bug” and more a coincidence that the application worked when it did.

hyperman1•5h ago
I'd love to see a technical analysis of what went wrong with the software and what to do about it. Similar to when airplanes crash etc... This is another case like Therac-25 that should be tought in every IT master class.
rwmj•4h ago
I did read a very technical report about this which obviously now I can't find :-( My takeaways were: (1) They didn't bother with double-entry bookkeeping. (2) It was a distributed system which no one fully understood and was not based on any normal distributed system principles. (3) Developers made ad hoc changes to the code and even database to temporarily patch things up, even going so far as to hard-code database ids into special cases throughout the code.

Edit: I think this one: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-... Also related article: https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2021/07/15/what-went-wrong-with...

secondcoming•4h ago
The inquiry into this scandal was live streamed on Youtube.

You had lawyers quizzing people from all ranks of the Post Office and Fujistu; very interesting.

Ever since, I’ve worded my work related electronic communications with the supposition that a lawyer may read them at some point in the future.

If I’m ever asked to do something seemingly unusual or ‘out of the box’, it must be put to me in writing.

parados•4h ago
Here is the original source for this article. Warning: it is a tough read, particularly section 3.c "Case Illustrations": https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/sites/default/fi...
throwawayHpCvfn•4h ago
As someone who attempted suicide almost ten years ago, I'm disheartened by how cold-hearted the comments on this article are. Accusations of certain wording being "woke" or "PC" and completely ignoring the substance of the article itself, as if the wording were the tragedy here. If we must have this discussion, I stopped using the phrase "committed suicide" when I found out it was a relic of when it was illegal and stigmatized by the justice system. I prefer "died by suicide", and I appreciate when others use it too. Not in the sense that I will correct people when they say committed (because most people, the ones in this comment section excepted, don't know the origins), but rather "oh hey, that person knows about this, and they care too."
whycome•3h ago
I think the discussion is that “driven to suicide” would be a more appropriate term. Their deaths were not coincidental or incidental. It is an attempt to acknowledge that their act was the result of the actions of the post office and others.
throwawayHpCvfn•2h ago
A few comments are like that, yes, and I have no objections to that description. Most of the discussion though seems to be more like this:

> I guess some people take comfort in the idea that suicide is thrust on people and they take no responsibility for their actions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44531844

Mordisquitos•2h ago
> As someone who attempted suicide almost ten years ago

Watch out. We use "attempt" for crimes, and by using it with "suicide" you are stigmatising the action in a problematic way. Please say "tried to die by suicide" instead.

throwawayHpCvfn•1h ago
Me: "Hey, I survived a suicide attempt several years ago, and I appreciate it when people who know the negative history behind 'committing suicide' say something else, because it shows that they care."

You (pre-edit): "The problem many of us see with saying 'unalived by suicide' rather than 'committed suicide' is the artificiality of the sentence and the implication that the language we speak has to keep up with the correct newspeak due to the latest euphemistic moral cleansing lest we appear uncouth and uncultured."

My point stands.

cletus•4h ago
People should go to jail for this.

Anyone who has worked on a large migration eventually lands on a pattern that goes something like this:

1. Double-write to the old system and the new system. Nothing uses the new system;

2. Verify the output in the new system vs the old system with appropriate scripts. If there are issues, which there will be for awhile, go back to (1);

3. Start reading from the new system with a small group of users and then an increasingly large group. Still use the old system as the source of truth. Log whenever the output differs. Keep making changes until it always matches;

4. Once you're at 100% rollout you can start decomissioning the old system.

This approach is incremental, verifiable and reversible. You need all of these things. If you engage in a massive rewrite in a silo for a year or two you're going to have a bad time. If you have no way of verifying your new system's output, you're going to have a bad time. In fact, people are going to die, as is the case here.

If you're going to accuse someone of a criminal act, a system just saying it happened should NEVER be sufficient. It should be able to show its work. The person or people who are ultimately responsible for turning a fraud detection into a criminal complaint should themselves be criminally liable if they make a false complaint.

We had a famous example of this with Hertz mistakenly reporting cars stolen, something they ultimately had to pay for in a lawsuit [1] but that's woefully insufficient. It is expensive, stressful and time-consuming to have to criminally defend yourself against a felony charge. People will often be forced to take a plea because absolutely everything is stacked in the prosecution's favor despite the theoretical presumption of innocence.

As such, an erroneous or false criminal complaint by a company should itself be a criminal charge.

In Hertz's case, a human should eyeball the alleged theft and look for records like "do we have the car?", "do we know where it is?" and "is there a record of them checking it in?"

In the UK post office scandal, a detection of fraud from accounting records should be verified by comparison to the existing system in a transition period AND, moreso in the beginning, double checking results with forensic accountants (actual humans) before any criminal complaint is filed.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...

akudha•4h ago
This was depressing to read. Failures at so many levels.

1. Immediately after Horizon was rolled out, issues were reported. But ignored

2. Prosecutors didn't bother to verify if there is another explanation before accusing thousands of people of stealing? Isn't it common sense to pause for a second and think, "could we please double check the evidence? how can thousands of postal workers suddenly turn into thieves?"

3. local newspaper had published a photo of her and labeled her the “pregnant thief.” - of course, UK tabloids. Click baits and write whatever the fuck they want, no matter whose lives are destroyed

4. post office has said that it does not have the means to provide redress for that many people - so they have the means to falsely prosecute and destroy the lives of thousands of people, but they don't have the means to correct their blunders?

This happened more than a decade ago. Citizens are expected to do everything on time (pay taxes, renew drivers license...) or get fined/jailed, but the government can sit on their butt for 10 YEARS and do nothing about a blunder they caused?

What about Fujitsu? Why can't the government make Fujitsu pay for the destruction caused by their shitty software?

Jeez. This is just fucking nuts

PaulRobinson•3h ago
I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points.

One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" by admitting they had made mistakes, so kept digging.

There is also a fundamental flaw in how the courts - and the Post Office prosecutors - were instructed to think about the evidence in common law.

Bizarrely, it was not (and may still not), be an acceptable defense to say that computer records are wrong. They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible, and if your evidence contradicts an IT systems evidence, you were considered a liar by the court, and a jury might be instructed accordingly.

Yes, that's awful. Yes, it's ruined lives.

But also, I think all involved have realised pointing fingers at one or two individuals to blame hasn't really helped fix things. Like an air accident, you have to have several things go wrong and compound errors to get into this amount of trouble, normally. There were systemic failing across procurement, implementation, governance, investigations, prosecutions, within the justice system and beyond.

I already know people who have worked for Fujitsu in the UK are not exactly shouting about it. And yet, they're still getting awarded contracts before the compensation has been paid out...

akudha•3h ago
Lets ignore everything else for a second. Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight? We're talking about postal workers for fuck's sake, not a bunch of mafia dudes. Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors to send as many people to jail as possible, guilty or not?

run by people who did not want to "harm the brand"

Oh well, now their precious brand has been harmed, how exactly do they expect to gain the trust, respect of the people back? Maybe they think the public will forget and move on? These people suck...

Akronymus•3h ago
afaict, the assumption was they already were, and were just uncovered.
mxfh•1h ago
Related case in the Netherlands: if you just think all dual citizens are up for no good as the pretext a lot of law abiding people's lifes will just get upended.

If legislation, jurisdiction and law enforcement forget about basic principles and human rights in favour of looking productive, collateral damage is pretty much more or less expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand...

justin66•3h ago
> One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

Which certainly contributed to the suicides.

arrowsmith•3h ago
> if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

Is this not the case in other countries?

helloguillecl•2h ago
In Germany, calling someone by a crime they have been sentenced of, constitutes defamation.
arrowsmith•2h ago
What? That makes no sense whatsoever.
akudha•1h ago
Why does it not make sense? If I was involved in a robbery at age 18, as a dumb kid, should I still be called "robber xyz" for the rest of my life? Especially if I turned my life around?
arrowsmith•1h ago
I agree that we should be forgiving, give people second chances etc, but that doesn't change the meaning of words. "Defamation" is when you damage someone's reputation by saying things about them that aren't true. If you were convicted of a crime long ago and someone draws attention to that fact, they're not defaming you. The truth isn't defamation, by definition.
mkehrt•1h ago
> The truth isn't defamation, by definition. This is a famously American position.
arrowsmith•1h ago
I'm not American, and we're discussing a UK news story.

But I genuinely didn't know that other countries do things differently. What does defamation even mean if it doesn't include the concept of untruth?

arh68•49m ago
Previously, [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40682485 (obviously, it means different things to different folks; I can't properly answer your question)

FWIW I'm only really familiar with the American usual.

jolmg•1h ago
> but that doesn't change the meaning of words.

Words can have multiple similar definitions with small variations. If I look up "defamation" I get:

> Defamation is a legal term that refers to any statement made by a person, whether verbal or printed, that causes harm to another person’s reputation or character. --- https://legaldictionary.net/defamation/

> Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

arrowsmith•1h ago
I stand corrected.
burkaman•1h ago
Calling someone a robber means they are currently a robber. It can be inaccurate and untrue in the same way that calling someone a bartender would be inaccurate and untrue if they are a lawyer who hasn't tended a bar in 20 years.

I don't like the idea of prosecuting people for this, but I don't think it's illogical.

veeti•33m ago
Would you extend the same courtesy to a murderer or child rapist?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•38m ago
> The truth isn't defamation, by definition.

Perhaps you mean slander/libel?

jen20•3h ago
> They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible

This will change when elected officials start getting hoisted by their own electronic petards.

The Venn diagram of midwit enterprise developers who build systems with audit trails yet could not swear under penalty of perjury that the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case is almost a circle.

Jooror•2h ago
Show me a system for which you believe the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case and I’ll show you a midwit…
whycome•3h ago
It's fucking nuts because it's worse than that too.

Fujitsu falsely claimed that they couldn't remotely modify data.

They used technical info to obfuscate things for the accused and the judges.

s_dev•3h ago
>2. Prosecutors didn't bother to verify if there is another explanation before accusing thousands of people of stealing? Isn't it common sense to pause for a second and think, "could we please double check the evidence? how can thousands of postal workers suddenly turn into thieves?"

They genuinely thought that the new software was uncovering a lot of theft that previously went undetected. This actually spurred them on even further thinking that the software was a godsend.

The sickening part is the people responsible won't ever see the inside of a prison cell despite sending many to prison for their failures.

wat10000•2h ago
Rationalization is a powerful force. People rarely come to objective beliefs based on evidence. They come to beliefs and then search for evidence. In law enforcement, people tend to decide on a suspect and then look for proof. Hence why you so often see prosecutors and police fighting to punish innocent people, sometimes even after they've been proven to be innocent.
akudha•1h ago
In law enforcement, people tend to decide on a suspect and then look for proof.

Yikes, such people shouldn't be in working in law enforcement then

flir•42m ago
Everyone does it. You and me too. It's just how brains work. First the opinion, then the evidence to back up the opinion.
dagmx•3h ago
I really wish someone had the political capital to do something about the tabloids. They’re really a detriment to society.
johnnyApplePRNG•3h ago
Politicians love the tabloids. They distract from the real goings-on.
arrowsmith•3h ago
I don't like the tabloids either but what exactly do you propose we do? Are you sure it's a good idea to undermine the freedom of the press?

A government with the power to censor the tabloids is also a government with the power to censor the news outlets that you do like. I'd be careful about opening that can of worms.

junon•3h ago
When tabloids circumvent due process to commit slander and get away with it there should be penalties, yes.
arrowsmith•2h ago
Defamation is already illegal. People sue each other for defamation all the time - in fact UK libel law is notoriously weighted in favour of the plaintiff. If these men were defamed they can sue the tabloids and they'll probably win.

GP was saying the government should do something. What more can the government do?

rwmj•55m ago
If they have a ton of money, which these postmasters do not.
jedimastert•2h ago
Aren't defamation laws in the UK almost shockingly restrictive? How the hell are they able to operate?
skywhopper•2h ago
No other country has as toxic a press culture as the UK. Addressing that doesn’t have to mean restricting press freedom. If something is a destructive cancer on society, you can’t just ignore it, or eventually it will destroy those freedoms for everyone else.
BobaFloutist•2h ago
The United States (famously) has stronger free speech protections and weaker libel/slander laws, yet seems to have less of an issue with tabloids. Is there maybe more of a divide between what's alloweable for "public figures" versus private citizens? Or maybe even our right-wing rags are more skeptical of the government? I don't know what the difference is, but you seem to see less of this sort of thing, gross as our tabloids still are. Maybe it really is just a cultural difference somehow.
esseph•2h ago
The US tabloids are awful. Any checkout isle at a Walmart, Dollar General, etc is just littered with them, right next to the disposable lighter packs and chewing gum.
ToValueFunfetti•1h ago
But nobody reads them in the US[1], and many are about celebrities or cryptids or what-have-you rather than current events or private citizens. There's definitely a cultural difference here.

[1] UK has 1/4th of the population of the US but The Sun has 4x the circulation of The New York Post. The Daily Mirror every day puts out 4x the number of papers that The National Enquirer puts out in a week.

BobaFloutist•1h ago
Sure, I did say they were gross, but they just seem to mostly cause less concrete damage. Not sure why.
cgriswald•2h ago
Civil defamation laws could equally be used to undermine freedom of the press. In any case, the 'can of worms' you are talking about was the state of affairs in the UK until 2009 and is currently the case in several US states and yet somehow we still have people in those states openly criticizing a sitting president.

Rather than throwing our hands in the air, maybe we could expect our governments to craft laws in such a way that we can punish people for willful lies resulting in death while still preserving our right to free speech and the press.

arrowsmith•2h ago
The UK already has extremely strong defamation laws, to the point where we attract "libel tourism" - foreigners find dubious excuses to bring their libel cases to the UK courts so that they have an easier chance of winning.

Lots of people in my replies are telling me that I'm wrong, but no-one has yet answered my question: what specifically should the government do?

cgriswald•1h ago
That’s because your question appears rhetorical. You had already come to the conclusion that governments couldn’t or shouldn’t do anything.

What could be done: (1) Stronger penalties, perhaps tied to proportionate burdens of proof. (2) Criminal penalties.

A weak burden of proof with mediocre penalties is just a cost of doing business.

flir•47m ago
Think that would be solving the last century's problem. I think you'd get more bang for your buck by reining in social media.
rossant•3h ago
Read about this [1, 2]. This is not yet a well-known scandal, but I expect (and hope) it will surface in the coming years or decade. It is on an even bigger scale, not limited to a single country, and it has been going on not just for 10 years but for many decades.

[1] https://cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-shaken-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402

fn-mote•1h ago
Incredible. Reading HN pays off again. Thank you for sharing.

The link is to a book by a PhD neuroscientist investigation the scientific basis for shaken baby syndrome.

rossant•1h ago
Yes, that's me.
TechDebtDevin•2h ago
fortunately, (most) governments will let you leave.
arp242•27m ago
> What about Fujitsu? Why can't the government make Fujitsu pay for the destruction caused by their shitty software?

Because the software didn't cause it.

Look, by all accounts the software was/is a piece of piss, but what made it such an egregious scandal is how the Post Office leadership dealt with things. There was really no good reason for that to happen. They just ignored reports of problems (proper reports written by auditors, not vague rumours). They lied to postmasters by saying that no one has problems (when, in fact, there were hundreds of people). Lots has been written about all of this and I won't repeat it all here.

So I must object to the phrasing of "caused by their shitty software". Of course lots can be said about the failings of the software itself and Fujitsu also lied and covered their tracks so they are not entirely blameless. But they emphatically did not "cause" any of this: it was the Post Office leadership who primarily caused this mess.

Lots of things go wrong in the world, lots of things are defective. What often matters the most is not so much the mistake or defect itself, but what the response to that is.

duncans•4h ago
What is amazing is the engineers the Fujitsu employed would testify in court against some of the subpostmasters saying "there were no faults" where in unearthed evidence of their support logs they could be clearly acknowledging bugs that could create false accounts, manually updating records and audit logs to balance it out (and also sometimes screwing that up).

See Nick Wallis' coverage: * https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html * https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/

> [Anne] Chambers closed the ticket with a definitive: “No fault in product”.

> The cause of the defect was assigned to “User” – that is, the Subpostmaster.

> When Beer asked why, Chambers replied: “Because I was rather frustrated by not – by feeling that I couldn’t fully get to the bottom of it. But there was no evidence for it being a system error.”

...

> 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. [Sir Wyn] 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.”

justin66•3h ago
Pretty sure I can guess the answer, but: does the UK have professional licensure for "software engineers?"
petesergeant•2h ago
Yes, software engineers can become Chartered Engineers via the BCS:

https://www.bcs.org/membership-and-registrations/get-registe...

Has anyone, ever? I've met precisely one.

whycome•3h ago
I’m really surprised the post office didn’t do more of a job to frame it as the “Fujitsu Scandal”. They could have made the public think it was a foreign Japanese issue
SCdF•3h ago
Effectively tortured to death.

One of the things that frustrates me with how ethics is taught in computer science is that we use examples like Therac 25, and people listen in horror, then their takeaway is frequently "well thank god I don't work on medical equipment".

The fact that it's medical equipment is a distraction. All software can cause harm to others. All of it. You need to care about all of it.

whycome•3h ago
That’s why the “died by suicide” language can be problematic. These people were driven by several factors and they were left with no choice.
arrowsmith•3h ago
"Driven to suicide" may be more accurate. And damning.
jedimastert•2h ago
Jesus I desperately wish real ethics classes were required for computer science degrees
UK-AL•1h ago
In the UK they are I think? Well if they want to be BCS accredited.
izacus•48m ago
Ethic classes are pointless without ethical liability and accountability of people causing suffering. Yes, even the Jira javascript ticket punchers hould be accountable for what they do.
gblargg•1h ago
Therac 25 is exactly what I thought of when reading this story. The software didn't have direct hardware control to kill patients with radiation, but it still resulted in thousands of victims.
mbonnet•1h ago
I work on satellites that are intended for use in missile tracking. If I fail in the software, it might not "kill people", but people will die due to the failures.

Though, I used to work on fighter jets and SAMs. People do die due to my work.

hotpocket777•54m ago
Are you proud of that or something?
ChrisArchitect•3h ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499498
jekwoooooe•3h ago
What is going on with the uk? From their failure to even acknowledge grooming gangs (let alone arrest anyone of substance) to this, they seem to be collapsing
exiguus•3h ago
I became aware of this fraud involving Fujitsu/Horizon and the UK Post Office at the beginning of this year because I watched the movie 'Mr. Bates vs The Post Office.' I can recommend it.

It's sad to see all these people losing their livelihoods and beliefs. And it gives me hope to see how they fought back and started to help each other over the decades.

jordanb•3h ago
I went on a deep dive on this scandal about a year or so ago. One thing that struck me is the class element.

Basically, the Post Office leadership could not understand why someone would buy a PO franchise. It's a substantial amount of money up front, and people aren't allowed to buy multiple franchises, so every PO was an owner/operator position. Essentially people were "buying a job".

The people in leadership couldn't understand why someone would buy the opportunity to work long hours at a retail position and end up hopefully clearing a middle class salary at the end of the year. They assumed that there must be a real reason why people were signing up and the real reason was to put their hands in the till.

So they ended up assuming the postmasters were stealing, and the purpose of the accounting software was to detect the fraud so it could be prosecuted. When the accounting software started finding vast amounts of missing funds, they ignored questions about the software because it was working as intended. I bet if the opposite had happened, and it found very little fraud, they would have become suspicious of the software because their priors were that the postmasters were a bunch of thieves.

hnfong•3h ago
Fascinating. Do you have references for the motives/biases of the PO leadership?
jordanb•3h ago
My entry-point was listening to this podcast, it's pretty long but it goes into the fact that the purpose of horizon was to detect fraud and reduce shrinkage, that the leadership and their consultants were coming up with outsized estimates for the amount of fraud and using that as financial justification for the project.

They also talk about postmaster's motivations for buying a franchise and how sitting behind a retail desk in a small town with a modest but steady income is actually one of the best outcomes available to the type of working-class Briton who was buying the franchise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j

amiga386•59m ago
I haven't listened to the podcast, but I think you may be oversimplifying.

The origin of Horizon is that ICL won the tender for a project to computerise the UK's benefits payment system -- replacing giro books (like cheque books) with smart cards (like bank cards):

https://inews.co.uk/news/post-office-warned-fujitsu-horizon-...

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmtr...

Sure, it was also expected to detect fraud, but overall it was a "modernising" project. The project failed disastrously because ICL were completely incompetent at building an accounting system, the system regularly made huge mistakes, and the incoming government scrapped it.

ICL was nonetheless still very chummy with government, as it was concieved of by 1960s British politicians who basically wanted a UK version of IBM because they didn't want Americans being in control of all the UK's computer systems. ICL used to operate mainframes and supply "computer terminals" to government and such, which is why they needed a lot of equipment from Fujitsu, which is why Fujitsu decided to buy them.

ICL/Fujitsu still kept the contract to computerize Post Office accounting more generally -- Horizon. Post Offices could literally have pen-and-paper accounting until this! Yes, the project was also meant to look for fraud and shrinkage, but at its heart it was there to modernise, centralise and reduce costs. If only it wasn't written by incompetent morons who keep winning contracts because they're sweet with government.

jen20•3h ago
I suspect there's more to it in than that.

I'd wager there was a solid amount of general incompetence involved at the PO "corporate" - management politically couldn't admit that their consultingware could be anything other than perfect, because they signed off on the decision to buy it, and probably on all the work orders that got them to that point.

If anyone from PO management or that of the consulting firm (Fujitsu, I believe?) ever get any work again, it will be a travesty of justice.

jordanb•2h ago
Yes at some point it turned into CYA. When the leadership started realizing that there were problems with the software they started doubling down, getting even more aggressive with prosecutions, because they were trying to hide their own fuckups.

But when the ball started rolling, as the software rolled out and was finding missing funds everywhere, you'd think a normal person would have asked "are we sure there are no bugs here?" That was never done, I believe, because the software was matching the leadership's priors.

dylan604•2h ago
> That was never done, I believe, because the software was matching the leadership's priors.

That has to be the most egregious confirmation bias I've heard about.

Maxious•2h ago
I regret to inform you that not only is Fujitsu not banned from UK government work, they're not even banned from continuing the same project https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/03/17/business-and-ind...
jen20•2h ago
Wow. That is the kind of thing that every reasonable person should be calling their MP's office about daily.
spwa4•1h ago
What do you mean? The government very strongly responded to this scandal, including having the person directly responsible, who instructed the post office to hide proof of the postmaster's innocence, appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

She has since been thrown under the bus, though, of course, not prosecuted or imprisoned (despite ordering wrongful prosecutions of over 900 others)

The politician responsible for her was Vince Cable, who since became leader of the Liberal Democrats, and holds 10 positions, most of which are either funded by the government or related to it.

wood_spirit•2h ago
There has been a lot of questions just in the last few days about Fujitsu continuing to bid for government contracts even when they said they wouldn’t. A random google result https://www.politico.eu/article/post-office-scandal-hit-fuji...
XTXinverseXTY•2h ago
Forgive my indelicate question, but why would someone buy a PO franchise?
trollbridge•2h ago
People buy into all kinds of money-losing businesses... Edible Arrangements, Nothing Bundt Cakes, various multi-level marketing type of schemes.

And yes, a lot of people are willing to go into debt to effectively pay to have a job.

rwmj•59m ago
Running a pub franchise is a time-honoured way to lose money in the UK. They're essentially scams to steer the life savings of the working class into the accounts of large breweries.

Edit: A timely news article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg8llxmnx7o

skywhopper•2h ago
Some folks like running a small shop, being their own boss, and serving their neighborhood community.
loeg•2h ago
Nevermind sibling comment about money-losing businesses, there are many small business operations like this where a substantial amount of capital buys a relatively moderate paying retail job. Think things like Subway franchises, or gas stations.
jordanb•2h ago
1) The franchise actually does represent a decent amount of stability and financial security for the franchisee. Well-run locations typically could clear a modest profit for the owner. These were not money losing franchises for the most part (until the prosecutions started of course).

2) The post offices were geographically distributed pretty evenly throughout the UK so there were positions in far-flung locations well outside London. In many of these communities it was a good and stable job compared to what else was available.

3) Many of the postmasters reported liking working retail positions where they get a lot of face time with customers. In many small towns the post office was a central part of the community.

OskarS•2h ago
I bet number 3 on your list there is super-appealing to many people. It sounds lovely to be the kind of person in a smaller community that everyone knows and says hi to, that helps you out with paying your bills or whatever it is. I’m guessing you’re also often the closest contact to the state in a smaller village, so there’s probably all sorts of applications and permits you’re asked to help out with.

Especially if you’re on the older side, it sounds like an absolutely wonderful way to spend your time. Assuming the post office doesn’t try to ruin your life afterwards.

mgkimsal•49m ago
My inlaws ran a rural UK post office for a time (70s, maybe early 80s?). I'm not sure how they got in to it, but seemed to enjoy it while they did it. Small village, low volume of foot traffic, etc. I got a sense it almost felt like a civic duty, but I may be reading too much in to the earlier conversations.
zerkten•20m ago
It might not be fully clear to the reader, but many of these Post Office franchises are co-located with a Spar, or other shop. People have to go to the Post Office (IME to a greater extent than here in the US where I now live) and they then shop for other items. Obviously, other businesses tend to cluster around as well.

There are situations where franchisees don't offer other services. These folks tend to be older and for most of the life of the franchise haven't had the need for additional income earlier in the life of the franchise. They don't have the energy and don't want to take on the risk of expanding now. When they retire, they'll probably close up shop as their children have other jobs.

The rural Post Office where I grew up in the 80s and 90s was accessible to a wide area just off the main road. It served a wider area than the current one. The Postmistress' family also farmed. When that closed the natural place to setup was in the closes village because that was projected to grow in population. That development would result in the old Post Office building being knocked down to make way for a dual carriageway. Eventually a few more Post Office franchises appeared with their shops in that part of the county.

People can read more at https://runapostoffice.co.uk/.

swarnie•2h ago
Its in OPs comment

> a retail position and end up hopefully clearing a middle class salary

Normal retail work is below the poverty line.

Beyond that i think it might be the social/community aspect. I simply can't use the post office in my town as its used as a social club for everyone over 70. Some people are just in to that kinda thing i suppose.

carstout•49m ago
Historically it wasnt a bad thing since it was an add on to an existing shop. The general idea being that I would come in to pick up my pension/tv licence or various other things the PO used to be the source for and then spend it in the other part of the shop.
ionwake•2h ago
I found this comment insightful but I feel I must itirate ( maybe its not needed), that it is not "clear" if leadership were ignorant, as you said, ( though Im sure you are part right ), I have read that it was malicious leadership trying to protect their own asses as per another comment.
jordanb•2h ago
I don't mean to let the leadership off the hook. What they did was profoundly wrong and they have blood on their hands.

There were two phases though: the initial rollout, and sometime later the coverup.

If they had asked very reasonable questions about the software during the rollout there would have been no need for a coverup. No software rolls out without any bugs and it's really reasonable to ask why so many post offices had missing funds and if they were sure if it was real or not. The PO leadership basically ignored all evidence that there were bugs from the very beginning, and that makes no sense until you realize that they were starting from the premise that the postmasters are thieves and this software is going to catch them.

shkkmo•2h ago
> No software rolls out without any bugs and it's really reasonable to ask why so many post offices had missing funds and if they were sure if it was real or not.

It would be reasonable, but that also assumes the ass-covering started post rollout rather than pre rollout.

LightBug1•2h ago
Interesting insight. Thanks.
duxup•1h ago
These kinds of assumptions about fraud always make me wonder about the folks in charge.

I was at a company acquired by silicon valley company. Our tech support department was folded into another tech support department. Immediately the folks in the valley were upset that we closed more cases / had far higher customer satisfaction scores ... by far. They made no secret that they assumed that us mid-westerners doing the same job had to be inferior at the same job.

Eventually a pool of managers in the valley developed a full blown conspiracy theory that we were cooking the books by making fake cases and so on. It just had to be that right? No other explanation.

They finally got someone in an outside department to look into it. They found folks closing cases prematurely and even duplicating cases. The people doing it all worked for the managers pointing fingers at everyone else ...

Sometimes the folks who talk about fraud think those things because that's how they work.

njovin•1h ago
So the PO creates a franchise program that they later decide isn't suitable for any sane, good-faith actor, and instead of revising the terms of the franchise program to make it so, they assume that the participants are criminals and prosecute them?
flir•1h ago
I see you've worked with a moribund bureaucracy before.
LiquidSky•32m ago
> isn't suitable for any sane, good-faith actor

I think this is the parent’s point: this is the POV of the rich and powerful who lead the organization. They can’t imagine someone in a different position seeing these franchises as a way to secure good (or at least decent), long-term, stable employment.

lawlessone•21m ago
The same way many think about welfare/unemployment/disability schemes.

Constant hoops to jump through to prove they're looking for work or still incapable.

Or in the case of illness to prove they're still sick. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59067101

forinti•1h ago
That's interesting. I read a lot about this case, but I don't recall anything along these lines.

This does explain why the leadership was so stubborn.

cman82•3h ago
For an excellent in-depth look at the scandal, I recommend Nick Wallis's book The Great Post Office Scandal. I read this soon after it came out and was wondering why it hadn't caused a national uproar. It was only the miniseries that prompted the required outrage.
rossant•2h ago
Yes, many scandals stay under the radar until a good book, film or series reaches millions at once. I hope the same happens with another subject close to my heart [1, 2]. A Netflix film on a related topic a few years ago already had a huge impact [3]. It focused on one case, but by the end of the movie it is clear that many others are similarly affected.

[1] https://cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-shaken-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Care_of_Maya

nickelpro•2h ago
The bug is hardly the problem here, it is necessary but far from sufficient for something like this to happen.

The UK legal system's ability to prosecute and penalize people without anything more than circumstantial evidence makes it unfit for purpose. It should be an embarrassment to a country that considers itself a member of the developed Western world.

NoMoreNicksLeft•1h ago
>The UK legal system's ability to prosecute and penalize people without anything more than circumstantial evidence makes it unfit for purpose.

This defect is present in all justice systems to some degree or another. For that matter, most crimes (serious or otherwise) rarely have the sort of smoking gun evidence that would satisfy us all that it wasn't circumstantial. Worse still, when the evidence isn't circumstantial, it's still usually testimonial in nature... some witness is on the stand at trial, describing what they saw. Or, perhaps more accurately, misinterpreting what they saw/remember.

The only difference this time around is that they were misinterpreting what their software logic meant.

nickelpro•27m ago
I recommend you read the report. The charges were brought solely on the claimed accounting shortfalls with no further evidence that the postmasters and sub-postmasters did anything wrong, not even an attempt to discover where the money had gone or anything resembling forensic accounting that would be required in similar US cases.

In the most shocking case, with Martin Griffiths, there were attempts to hold him responsible for robbery loses he had absolutely nothing to do with:

> On 2 May 2013 a robbery occurred at the Post Office which resulted in a net loss to the Post Office of £38,504.96, which was reduced to £15,845 after some of the money was recovered. Mr Griffiths was injured during the robbery; he was present in the branch when it occurred. The Post Office Investigator advised the Post Office that Mr Griffiths was partly to blame for the loss sustained by the Post Office and that he should be held responsible for part of the loss. [1]

Such a claim wouldn't even be colorable in most jurisdictions.

I disagree that anything similar could happen at this scale in the US or France. Individual cases might not be handled perfectly, but this is a systemic miscarriage of justice where at every turn individuals were prosecuted without any evidence of individual wrongdoing. It was believed money was missing, no attempt was made to discover how it went missing, and the post-masters were held responsible without further inquiry. The legal system upheld these non-findings as facts and convicted people based upon them.

[1]: Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, 3.49

NoMoreNicksLeft•15m ago
>> On 2 May 2013 a robbery occurred at the Post Office which resulted in a net loss to the Post Office of £38,504.96, which was reduced to £15,845 after some of the money was recovered. Mr Griffiths was injured during the robbery; he was present in the branch when it occurred. The Post Office Investigator advised the Post Office that Mr Griffiths was partly to blame for the loss sustained by the Post Office and that he should be held responsible for part of the loss. [1]

This is hilarious... in the land of "you can't defend yourself or especially your property", he was partly to blame. That one is hilarious.

>I disagree that anything similar could happen at this scale in the US or France.

In the US, the US Mail is sacred, so I agree it could never be attacked like this. But other industries, other scenarios? That level of prosecutorial malfeasance isn't unusual at all. I will concede that the scale of it may differ, but only because I have no ready examples, not because I believe that there is some sort of safeguard that would prevent it.

kypro•2h ago
I know this is only tangentially relevant, but as someone who lives in the UK the inhuman and process driven nature of the way the state operates today is terrifying to me.

Several times in recent years I've had people significantly financially and emotionally affected by what amounts to just fairly minor errors of judgement that the state treats as deliberate criminal acts and will follow up on with absolutely no human judgement or compassion.

An obvious example of this is tax law which despite being extremely complicated is followed by the state with no human consideration for individual circumstances. I guess upper-middle-class people must just know from osmosis every letter of UK tax code, but I've had so many people in my family not realise that they need to fill tax returns for certain things like Bitcoin disposals, OnlyFans earnings, eBay gains, income from helping neighbours with building/gardening work, etc... And the state can be absolutely fucking brutal when you make a mishap like this. They do not give a crap about intention or whether you've otherwise been a law abiding citizen. Case in point is HMRCs name and shame list which I believe was intended to name and shame high-profile tax evaders, but has basically just become a list of working class dudes who (perhaps stupidly in our eyes) didn't realise they had to manually file tax returns on their income.

Even extremely mediocre things are treated with brutal enforcement... For example, a street by mine recently changed from 30mph to 20mph overnight and this resulted in literally thousands of people being caught exceeding the speed limit by 10mph. There was no understanding that these people obviously didn't expect the speed limit to randomly change over night, instead they were all sent a letter from the government stating the government's intent to prosecute them for their offence... Any human would have thought, hm, yeah the fact thousands of people were caught when we made this change might imply that people didn't deliberately exceed the speed limit but we didn't make it clear enough that it had changed.

Obviously this is a totally different magnitude to what these people went through, but again I think it's all a result of overly systematic rule following that makes people feel completely powerless when the state decides they've done something wrong. There's absolutely nothing you can do to say, "hey, you know me... I wouldn't do this. You've made a mistake." Nope, sorry computer says no, and that's the end of it.

I get what I'm suggesting here isn't practical and this is just a side-effect of a large state which must depersonalise and systematise everything, but when you're a person caught on the wrong side of that system it's fucking scary because no one will listen to you or relate to you as a human being. And everyone you talk to can ruin your life at the click of a button and you know it's their job to do it when the system tells them that's what they must do.

Obviously these people had some legal assumption of innocence, but on a human level the assumption was always that they couldn't be trusted and were criminals. If you've ever experienced this before, where it's just assumed that you are guilty because of some faulty or misleading information it's psychologically brutal. You feel helpless, powerless and you're treated as if you lack humanity. It's horrible feeling and completely unsurprising to me these people decided to do the only thing they could reasonably do to take back control of their lives.

Sadly we'll learn nothing from this.

lysace•1h ago
I was curious so I looked into it: It looks like about 10x the average UK suicide rate (assuming "the worst case": all male, 40+ over about a decade. In reality some percentage of the about 1000 wrongfully accused will be female, of course).
foota•46m ago
This is horrifying.
bn-l•19m ago
There is something very rotten about this country. It’s like the heart of it has rotted out totally.
horizion2025•7m ago
A big issue is that the British post office could itself act as the prosecutor. Other entities reporting a crime need to convince the public prosecutor before there even is a case, but due to hundred years old traditions the Post Office had the right act as its own prosecutor. Effectively the same problem as in the LLoyd's scandal where LLoyd's effectively was its own regulator.