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Comment by Gee8r9 | Hacker News Reader

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Gee8r9·

It was not a software glitch! Such thing would get normally discovered and fixed in a few months

It was corrupt managers, police and goverment! Literal conspiracy to destroy lives of innocent people!

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So the corruption made it that somehow that bug-free software produced inconsistencies in accounting? Interesting.

There were hundreds of these cases, and the affect post-masters were calling the IT helpline repeatedly saying sums of money were going missing. Personally I think that if you have hundreds of people of good reputation and standing swearing up and down that they didn't steal money, and there's a record of their having called repeatedly to report erroneous data in the software, then there should be some sort of investigation to figure out what was going on. Instead they were shouted down and threatened.

There was a case where after a call to the IT helpline the "missing" money just doubled, and the helpline just said "well pay the new amount or go to jail"

The point is that the bugs on their own would have been merely a nuisance leading to unnecessary audits if not for the severe mismanagement around them.

Nobody said the software is bug free. That is your interpretation. The corruption lies in the fact that the bug wasn't fixed.

> Nobody said the software is bug free.

The comment I replied to literally said exactly that.

Seems like an uncharitable interpretation. Reads more like they were replying to the headline by saying management sent people to prison, not the glitch.

No it didn't. It correctly says that the glitch itself didn't ruin lives, and that the officials' response to the glitch did ruin lives.

Who prevented the bug from being fixed?

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