The Post Office Scandal: The Naive Faith in Computers: Steven Murdoch

The courts have a naive faith in computer evidence, based in ignorance. Since the repeal of the section of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act which required certification that computer systems were functioning correctly, a presumption has been adopted by the courts of England and Wales that they simply do, without the need for any certification to confirm it and is therefore admissible as evidence.
This presumption formed the basis for the criminal prosecutions and civil actions against subpostmasters who were consequently put in the position of having to prove their innocence with no need by the Post Office to prove that Horizon, full of bugs as it was, was functioning properly.
This resulted in the hundreds of miscarriages of justice caused to subpostmasters and the ruin of many lives
Steven Murdoch is Professor of Security Engineering and Royal Society Research Fellow at University College London. He is Innovation Security Architect at OneSpan. He explains how wrong this presumption is, how ignorant the courts and lawyers are and how laughable IT specialists consider this presumption to be.

[@xh28]

"The court system doesn't seem to understand how computers work" (17m 32s) is perhaps one of the most worrying statements I have heard given the pervasive nature of IT systems these days - even the court systems are computerised. I have been following this on and off since Computer Weekly first started reporting it many years ago and it just keeps getting worse the more I learn. Many many people from PO Ltd and Fujitsu deserve to be locked up for what they did to the Subpostmasters.

[@barneypage2125]

Excellent interview. It appears one sub-postmaster, who was also a union representative was allowed access to the high security Fujitsu HQ. He noticed that terminals were being entered into sub-postmaster accounts by the software technicians. He was even given a demonstration. He also sensed that the staff were not happy that he was in the building and was escorted out when they found out he was not just a union rep but a sub-postmaster.
His post office was soon audited, found to be short and he was removed.
B Page

[@phoenixradioDN14_5DS]

The more I hear the more discusted I am

[@tonyholmes962]

A room in Bracknel with 30 techies maintaining a running fix with no record of who is doing what. Fooljustyou.