oThe TV show "Mr Bates vs the Post Office" has astounded viewers. That a venerable institution like the Post Office could lie, cheat, and hurt so many people with flawed computer systems for more than 20 years seems almost impossible yet it happened.
The enquiry into the affair is showing how, despite knowledge to the contrary, PO officials hounded sub postmasters for illusory debts without a shred of compassion.
A key part of the problem is that Fujitsu could remotely access the sub postmasters computers and alter the figures. Theirs was not an immutable ledger recording transactions in a permanent way. Indeed, the impermanence of the system caused tremendous injury and confounded people's expectations.
Even when the faults were exposed by Computer Weekly the Post Office executives refused to believe the Horizon system was at fault.
When Horizon was instigated it was before the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper on Bitcoin and Blockchain in 2008. Blockchain provides an immutable, tamper-proof system of recording transactions in an encrypted ledger. Only a set of public and private keys would provide access.
What if Horizon were changed to a permissioned Blockchain ledger? It would have prevented the PO and Horizon from tampering with the records. It would have given security to the sub postmasters and PO officials. Next time, I hope.
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