The Post Office Horizon scandal must be a national reckoning with what happens when tech is deployed without proper oversight or accountability, says Dan Howl

“It is almost impossible to ascertain, with any degree of accuracy, the number of persons who have suffered as a result of the misplaced reliance upon data produced by Horizon.”

That sentence appears in the first volume of the final Horizon Inquiry report released yesterday, and it should stop us all in our tracks.

Because this wasn’t just about software – it was a systemic failure of leadership, ethics and governance that wrecked lives and meant that public trust in several professions needed to be rebuilt.

Horizon is one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in British legal history, but it wasn’t caused by a dystopian sentient AI. It was driven by human decisions, a lack of ethical and professional standards and the legal presumption, now finally under review, that computer evidence is inherently........

© City A.M.