Over the Fujitsu Horizon

How gullible politicians buying buggy software are creating hell on earth

You might prefer to dub what we’re struggling through ‘the Age of the Pandemic’ and you wouldn’t be wrong. Sorting out the damage done during the last three years is going to take a decade or more. Maybe we’ll never agree on what really happened to us except for this: the government did it. Which is why trust in the political class, never very high, is now at rock bottom. Increasingly, our politicians resemble zombies tottering about mindlessly at the beck and call of major corporations. And I don’t just mean Big Pharma. For corruption and malfeasance on a massive scale, look no further than The Postmaster Scandal’ the most incredible political fiasco to hit Britain for two decades.

As stories go, it has everything: a cabal of entitled upper class twits literally subjugating and stealing money via a dodgy IT system from the nicest, most honest bunch of people in Britain, the sub-postmasters that own and run remote village post offices. Called a terrible miscarriage of justice, it’s actually bigger than that. It’s about how believing digital data instead of humans creates hell on earth. Imagine your own worst day in computer hell and extrapolate to an entire class of helpless and mostly hapless people. Some were so naïve about what computers actually do that they began doubting themselves. Maybe they were at fault and stole thousands of pounds by mistake? Remember them when our government forces us to adopt digitized money, as they are hell-bent on doing. This is what you might call a significant ‘teachable moment’.

You might also be tempted to think that it’s just a tempest in a British teapot that has nothing to do with us. But not so fast: this is a festering problem not native to Britain; it has already happened all over the world and its tentacles reach far into the future. A future ruled by AI systems, in other words, software designed by humans. With human flaws baked in. Add to that our collective ingrained habit of believing that computers are ‘smarter’ than us, and you’ve got the conditions for suffering on a massive scale.

The gist of this tale of modern woe is that for about the last two decades, the front-line sub postmasters/mistresses in small English towns were grappling with accusations that they were stealing money when in fact, the dodgy Fujitsu IT system known as Horizon, was at fault. It was being remotely manipulated and everyone at the higher levels lied about that when the government hauled these low-level employees into court, convicting them, en masse. It took nearly a decade of botched court cases, several attempts to alert the public via the telly and eventually a petition signed by well over a million people to finally put an end to it. The latest twist in this insane tale is an itv dramatization that tore the lid off and revealed the Truth. Meet Mr Bates vs the Post Office:

Horizon software, courtesy of the Japanese behemoth Fujitsu, was mismanaging the entire post office, but the hapless human postmasters got the blame. The government and upper management at the post office sided with the IT system and dismissed the sub-postmasters as liars and thieves. Some of them committed suicide. Lives were permanently ruined. It went on for two decades and was initiated by none other than Tony Blair for a cool billion. But at long last, the lid has blown off and it now appears that all those ‘convictions’ were wrong and have to be overturned right quick. The CEO who ran the Post Office during this period, Paula Vennelly, has finally admitted wrongdoing and returned her CBE, the Order of the British Empire, awarded while the scandal was mounting, and the people involved knew that a nasty game of upmanship was being played. Rishi is ‘thinking about’ expediting the process of exoneration for some 800 remaining postmasters with a brand-new law. Those that have already been exonerated are still waiting for the government of Rishi Sunak, billionaire, to return the stolen funds. Meanwhile, some 50 of them have already died, waiting in vain. No wonder the British public is in a foul temper.

According to the Spectator, Fujitsu is well known for its terrible software, (its own employees say so) and the people condemned to using it live in data hell, a prison without doors or windows. But it is one of those global companies that seem to literally get away with murder. The scandal is not being covered in Japan, though you might think they would care about their image abroad. Fujitsu doesn’t just administer the post office in Britain. Wait there’s more. Once upon a time when Britain was for sale, it scooped up the entire British IT sector and has since insinuated itself into every branch of British government. They have their own ‘royal representative’ in the government, no less. It’s quite a cozy club, it is. And they don’t deign to listen to the words of the little people. Especially when they make sense. And so, in a predictable and dreadful convergence of classism, hubris, lies and bad software, the Postmaster Plot grew legs and devoured hundreds of innocent people like some latter-day Godzilla.

Of course, you could argue that the politicians didn’t write the dodgy software. That they were taken for a ride by the company, at least initially. And once on board, with predictable stubbornness and hubris, they refused to admit that they made the wrong choice. Failed to do their due diligence. Yes. But.

Unfortunately, trusting big global software companies is what governments do these days. They need them even though they have no way of actually understanding what they are buying. Not that they would ever admit such a thing. But you could make a case that the initial fault, dear Brutus, lies with the company duping the arrogant politicians. From that moment on, everything is a fateful, ghastly drama that will be replicated until we fire them all. And learn a bitter lesson.

It is easily found: the British example has precedents all over the globe, especially here in one of Canada’s coldest provinces, Saskatchewan. The Postmasters in Britain should really reach out to the bureaucrats in the provincial payment system; they have so much in common. For the last two decades, employees of the provincial government in Saskatchewan have had their lives irrupted by a $billion dollar payroll fiasco appropriately called “Phoenix”. This system has never worked properly. It is supposed to pay them their wages. No such luck. Some found themselves not paid at all while others got a big bump in their paycheck. All of it had terrible consequences when tax time came around. The government was ill pleased though it was they who had caused the calamity in the first place. The people in the system bore the brunt and to this day, even with yet another new payment software system, it’s still not functioning. In Australia, the government bureaucrats had similar experiences and finally just chucked their entire IT system. They literally went back to paper and pencil. I don’t think that lasted for long. We no longer know how to do things that way. We prefer to make terrible mistakes via digits.

Let’s face it: we’re hooked on digital technology that has the power and awesome reach of a Major God. It’s our Golden Calf and if we continue to worship it, we should get ready for a world in which everyone becomes a Postmaster fighting with terrible software from some global behemoth beyond reach. And reliving a modern incarnation of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, who finds that he cannot control the magic brooms he has summoned.

Is that the world we want? Of course not. But it’s going to happen unless we simply say NO MORE. We once worshipped fire but eventually, we learned to control it. In the same manner, the Digital Gods must be dethroned, once and for all. Put in their proper place as servants. The message is clear: Right now, we’re allowing the Digital God to dictate the terms. We are also in danger of anthropomorphizing this calculating monster. We should remember that it is heartless, cannot see context and is therefore, ‘crazy’; totally inhuman. Computers never feel a thing, no matter how many neuronal networks they own. They do not have bodies, nor souls.  Whereas we do. We are not just thinking machines; we have imagination, faith, love, and all manner of feelings wrapped up in our bodies. And we must not panic or ascribe human traits to the machines. We are the humans here. All we need to do is this:  figure out who is to be master of humanity: Us or Them.