The UK, the Postal Operation, and Computers
April 11, 2025
According to the Post Office Scandal, there’s a new amendment in Parliament that questions how machines work: “Proposed Amendment To Legal Presumption About The Reliability Of Computers.”
Journalist Tom Webb specializes in data protection and he informed author Nick Wallis about an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill that is running through the British Parliament. The amendment questions:
“It concerns the legal presumption that “mechanical instruments” (which seems to be taken to include computer networks) are working properly if they look to the user like they’re working properly.”
Wallis has chronicled the problems associated with machines appearing to work properly since barrister Stephen Mason reported the issue to him. Barrister Mason is fighting on behalf of the British Post Office Scandal (which is another story) about the this flawed thinking and its legal implication. Here’s more on what the problem is:
“Although the “mechanical instruments” presumption has never, to the best of my knowledge, been quoted in any civil or criminal proceedings involving a Subpostmaster, it has been said to effectively reverse the burden of proof on anyone who might be convicted using digital evidence. The logic being if the courts are going to assume a computer was working fine at the time an offence allegedly occurred because it looked like it was working fine, it is then down to the defendant to prove that it was not working fine. This can be extremely difficult to do (per the Seema Misra/Lee Castleton cases).”
The proposed amendment uses legal jargon to do the following:
“This amendment overturns the current legal assumption that evidence from computers is always reliable which has contributed to miscarriages of justice including the Horizon Scandal. It enables courts to ask questions of those submitting computer evidence about its reliability.”
This explanation means that just because the little light is blinking and the machine is doing something, those lights do not mean the computer is working correctly. Remarkable.
Whitney Grace, April 11, 2025
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