LETTERS: Perhaps, we can learn something from a compelling documentary drama "Mr Bates vs the Post Office" that aired on the BBC on Jan 1.
This programme is based on the UK Post Office scandal between 1999 and 2015 and is regarded as the widest miscarriage of justice and biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history. More than 700 sub postmasters found themselves wrongly convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud, yet the root cause of these convictions lay not in criminal activity but rather in errors within the UK Post Office's accounting software.
The UK Post Office defended the robustness of the system, relentlessly prosecuting sub-postmasters or compelling them to cover shortfalls when discrepancies arose. The repercussions of these court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonment and subsequent financial ruin, inflicted a heavy toll on victims and their families. The fallout resulted in severe stress, illness, broken marriages and even suicides.
Then, in a pivotal turn of events in 2019, 555 sub-postmasters led by Bates brought a group action against the UK Post Office in the High Court. The judge ruled that the system indeed contained bugs, errors and defects.
This docu-drama ignited a national uproar, propelling the issue to the forefront of political and public discourse in the UK.
Public opinion, often the catalyst for political action, then pressured authorities and politicians to expedite compensation for victims and rectify the multitude of potentially wrongful convictions among sub-postmasters.
The docu-drama also shed light on the law that made it easy for the Post Office to wrongly convict people based on computer evidence. In 1999, British law adopted a presumption that a computer system has operated correctly unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary.
Consequently, losses attributed to the system were automatically deemed the fault of the sub-postmasters, whether through theft or incompetence. Calls within the UK for a reassessment of this legal presumption regarding computer evidence have grown louder and more insistent.
Interestingly, in 1993, amendments to the Malaysian Evidence Act allowed for the admissibility of "computer generated documents" in civil and criminal proceedings, provided that it was produced in the course of its ordinary use and a certificate produced by the person in charge of the computer.
However, as anyone familiar with computer software knows, the adage "Garbage in, Garbage out" rings true. The quality of a computer's output is tied to the quality of its input, and the complexity of software increases the likelihood of bugs, errors and defects.
In light of the UK Post Office scandal, it might be prudent for us in this region to scrutinise the admissibility of computer evidence. The potential harm arising from the misuse of such evidence should be a cautionary tale for us.
CHEW KOK LIANG
Singapore
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times