The Post Office Scandal
summary
Horizon (Fujitsu) misreports branch balances across 11.5k UK outlets, the system’s bugs lead to 983 convictions and ~4,000 people affected, with bankruptcies and several suicides. Development lacks unit tests, APIs, design standards or peer review; data duplication and manual corrections are common and remote access and presumed-correct court rules compound harm. A replacement NewBranch is being built in house but still delays testing until after development, so systemic trust in software remains the risk.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:45What is the Post Office
- 1:51Horizon
- 2:43Gaslighting
- 3:53Prosecution
- 5:08Trust people first
- 6:01Evidence from computers
- 9:20The most painful lesson
- 10:21New Branch
- 10:48Post Office Lessons
- 12:22Conclusion
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