When Blind Belief In Tech Becomes Dangerous
Tech zealots and evangelists are well known for having absolute trust in the power of their designs and inventions to be effective, reliable and a power for good. It’s the rest of us who are left to point out the reality. Their confidence may be based on an overwhelming belief in the positive, a refusal to acknowledge the negative or the corporate need for pure bottom-line profit. Sometimes all three.
Two recent examples illustrate how this can be dangerous — sometimes fatally so.
IT Accounting
The UK’s 11,000 Post Offices have a central role in our life. In recent years there has been a major increase in the products and services offered. A major underlying IT development that started at the turn of the century has been part of the foundation for this change. The little old village post office has therefore taken on a new look and, particularly in rural areas, this has further boosted its role as a hub of the community.
Central to the IT development was the phasing out of manual accounting to be replaced by a new system called Horizon. The day to day cash register had to be reconciled and balanced with transactional history processed by Horizon. The two should of course always be the same but sub postmasters (those who ran the post offices) were told that if there was ever an inconsistency then Horizon would be considered right and they would be considered wrong. This was a dangerous starting point.
The problem was that quite often the two did not reconcile and the differences could be both large and frequent. Extraordinarily, sub postmasters were told to maintain a cash float from which cash should be added to the till in order to balance with Horizon but this was their money and when the figures became hundreds and then thousands a huge problem formed. The only alternative to filling the hole with their own cash was for the sub postmasters to query the figures with the Post Office but here the problem became a crisis because the Post Office point blank refused to accept that there could be any error with the system and thus accused the postmasters of incompetence — or worse, fraud.
Some sub postmasters were driven to illness, others lost homes and money, some went to prison and there was at least one suicide and several attempts. The machine was against them. The Post Office insisted that they were wrong because the system simply couldn’t be.
Only it was. In 2019, the High Court found it to be so and thus also found innocent the many sub postmasters whose lives had been thrown into financial, emotional and reputational turmoil.
The £58m damages awarded to the 500 or so sub postmasters who bravely got together to bring the case to court looks like a happy ending but for many it isn’t. Legal fees will take much of this such that many may barely get back what they lost. In any event, money too will not put right the criminal convictions suffered by some through no fault of their own as a result of this travesty.
The Post Office’s earlier stubborn insistence on the infallibility of its system and its aggressive pursuit of postmasters through the courts has now been replaced by an insistence on drawing a line under things. Acknowledgement that independent forensic accountants had found Horizon to be at fault in 2012 and that that report had been buried and its authors fired now seem to be almost incidental. Sorry seems to be enough.
Clearly it isn’t. At the end of February the Prime Minister committed to ‘getting to the bottom of the matter’ which suggests a Public Enquiry at some point. In the meantime several sub postmasters are aiming to have their cases reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Both of these things can’t come soon enough for many of those bruised and battered by the whole fiasco — and for many of us appalled at the bullying and victimisation of people tarred as dishonest when they are exactly the opposite. The powers that be are taking notice. In the words of Lord Arbuthnot — “It is hard to find words strong enough to condemn the people in charge of this catastrophic fiasco. What have the people in charge suffered as a result? One of them, Paula Vennells, has been given a CBE and now sits on government-sponsored boards. None of the rest, as far as I can see, have suffered at all.”
This is not over.
Smart Meters
The UK Government’s commitment to smart meters has resulted in an ambitious £13bn roll out plan in which some 53m homes are planned to be fitted with them by 2024 (delayed from the original planned 2020.) This is one part of the ambition to become a carbon neutral economy and much of the marketing to consumers has promoted meters as ‘helping Britain’s energy system reduce waste and CO2 emissions.’
Whilst this is laudable of course, there have long been concerns about the meters themselves. Experiences in the US and Canada — including class action lawsuits in California and Texas for inaccurate bills — rang alarm bells for many people in the anti-camp. The pro camp represented by the Government and energy company backed Smart Energy GB, has sought to assuage concerns in three prime areas –
· safety — Public Health England for example has deemed the meters’ radio waves to be on a par with mobile phones and baby monitors — i.e. safe
· security — initial concerns (raised by GCHQ amongst others) about hacked smart meters being a route into a home’s wi-fi connected devices have apparently been addressed by the use of a closed secure private network being used to transmit readings rather than over the internet
· accuracy — we are told that devices will clearly record usage thereby creating more precise bills and, most importantly, the ability for households to reduce their usage and bills on the basis of improved understanding
Whilst there are many who remain sceptical about the claims in all three cases, it’s the latter that experience seems to question the most. It’s also here where an unwavering trust in the ‘rightness’ of tech can hurt.
There have been a number of cases over recent years of bills that appeared nonsensical but which the energy companies insisted were correct — on the basis that smart meters don’t make mistakes. In fact they do. They can be installed wrongly; they can stop working altogether (first generation meters becoming dumb in that they show readings but don’t transmit data) and they can simply record incorrect usage. What’s worse is that the energy companies relentlessly chase outstanding amounts even after the readings on which they are based are shown as erroneous.
Three years ago a Dutch study showed that some smart meters were showing figures up to 580% higher than the actual usage. At that time too there were reported cases of customers receiving bills for £30,000 of use in a single day. Last year an 85-year-old French woman made a stand when her bill multiplied by a factor of eight after a smart meter was installed by EDF. After she complained EDF refused to visit and check the meter; instead they cut off her electricity for two months. Two and a half years and much legal effort later, a district court ruled in her favour and ordered the energy giant to pay Eu 2300 in damages, interest and expenses. The tenacity and indefatigability of this lady is to be admired; anyone who has disputed a bill with an energy company will know that their response is premised on the unquestionable accuracy of their technology coupled with an attritional attitude to disputes with customers who lack resources to contest and have an absolute need for its service. The stress and unfairness of this has left many drained, stressed and in debt.
This blind confidence in the ‘rightness’ of tech illustrates a broad deifying of tech creators. Whilst no one would suggest that accounting systems or smart meters are examples of the Silicon Valley worship that has made icons out of Zuckerberg, Jobs and Musk for example, there is nevertheless a link. These stories reflect situations in which positions are taken that fly in the face of evidence and experience — common sense would tell anyone that hundreds of small local businesses don’t suddenly become fraudulent and that energy usage doesn’t increase 6 fold overnight when the only thing that has changed in the household is the means of measuring it. It is not Luddite to ask for some of this common sense to prevail or at least to be applied in the judgement of how technology impacts lives.
Sources
IT Accounting — Nick Wallis –postofficetrial.com; Sunday Times 2020; theregister.co.uk
Smart Meters — uSwitch.com; smartmeterharm.com; ladpeche.fr; Guardian July 2019; smart-energy.com; smartenergygb.org
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