Despite 16-Year Glitch, UK Law Still Considers Computers 'Reliable' By Default

Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes:
Hundreds of British postal workers wrongly convicted of theft due to faulty accounting software could have their convictions reversed, according to a story from the BBC. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses — an average of one a week — based on information from a computer system called Horizon, after faulty software wrongly made it look like money was missing. Some 283 more cases were brought by other bodies including the Crown Prosecution Service.

2024 began with a four-part dramatization of the scandal airing on British television, and the BBC reporting today that its reporters originally investigating the story confronted 'lobbying, misinformation and outright lies.'

Yet the Guardian notes that to this day in English and Welsh law, computers are still assumed to be 'reliable' unless and until proven otherwise.

But critics of this approach say this reverses the burden of proof normally applied in criminal cases. Stephen Mason, a barrister and expert on electronic evidence, said: 'It says, for the person who's saying 'there's something wrong with this computer', that they have to prove it. Even if it's the person accusing them who has the information....'

He and colleagues had been expressing alarm about the presumption as far back as 2009. 'My view is that the Post Office would never have got anywhere near as far as it did if this presumption wasn't in place,' Mason said... [W]hen post office operators were accused of having stolen money, the hallucinatory evidence of the Horizon system was deemed sufficient proof. Without any evidence to the contrary, the defendants could not force the system to be tested in court and their loss was all but guaranteed.

The influence of English common law internationally means that the presumption of reliability is widespread. Mason cites cases from New Zealand, Singapore and the U.S. that upheld the standard and just one notable case where the opposite happened... The rise of AI systems made it even more pressing to reassess the law, said Noah Waisberg, the co-founder and CEO of the legal AI platform Zuva.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.