来源：《每日电讯报》
原文刊登日期：2021年4月24日
Yesterday the Court of Appeal overturned the unsafe convictions of dozens of sub-postmasters, restoring the reputations of some of those damaged by one of the greatest injustices in British legal history. It was also a technological horror story.
昨天，上诉法院推翻了对数十名邮政分局局长证据不足的定罪，恢复了一些因英国法律史上最大不公正事件之一而受损的人的声誉。这也是一个技术恐怖故事。
The Horizon accounting computer system, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was installed in Post Office branches in 1999; it soon became obvious that it was riddled with “bugs, errors and defects”, to quote a High Court judge, causing it to report financial shortfalls that ran into thousands of pounds. Some postmasters attempted to compensate for its errors with their own money; some remortgaged their own homes. Nevertheless, the Post Office accused perfectly innocent people of stealing, and hounded them through the courts.
由日本富士通公司开发的Horizon会计计算机系统于1999年安装在英国邮政总局分支机构；引用一位高等法院法官的话，很快就很明显，该系统充满了“漏洞、错误和缺陷”，导致它报告了数千英镑的财务亏空。一些邮政分局局长试图用自己的钱来弥补软件的差错；有些人抵押了自己的房子贷款填补亏空。然而，英国邮政总局指控完全无辜的人偷窃，并通过法庭追捕他们。
Between 2000 and 2014, 736 sub-postmasters were prosecuted – an average of one a week. These men and women had been pillars of their local communities: now they were treated like pariahs. Seema Misra, for example, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010 after being found guilty of stealing £78,000 from her Surrey post office. Julian Wilson, who ran a post office in Worcester, was accused of stealing £27,000, suspended and told that his only option was to plead guilty to false accounting, to avoid going to prison. He was given 300 hours of community service, including work in a graveyard. Mr Wilson later died of cancer.
2000年至2014年间，736名邮政分局局长被起诉——平均每周一名。这些男人和女人曾经是当地社区的支柱：现在他们被当作贱民对待。例如，西玛·米斯拉在2010年被判入狱15个月，此前她被判从萨里邮局盗窃7.8万英镑。朱利安·威尔逊是伍斯特一家邮局的老板，他被指控盗窃了2.7万英镑，被停职，并被告知他唯一的选择就是承认做假账，以免入狱。他被罚提供300小时的社区服务，包括在墓地工作。威尔逊后来死于癌症。
How was any of this allowed to happen? Which individuals will take responsibility? If the Post Office was being defrauded on this scale, it would have suggested, improbably, that theft was endemic in British society; anyone sitting at the top of the organisation should have been able to join the dots and realise something other than human malfeasance was at work. However, the Post Office, despite knowing that there were issues with the reliability of the Horizon computer system, simply refused to acknowledge that it might be in the wrong. It insisted to the bitter end, according to the High Court, that the “Earth is flat”.
这一切是怎么发生的？哪些人将承担责任？如果英国邮政总局受到如此大规模的欺诈，这表明盗窃在英国社会是普遍存在的，但这不大可能；任何坐在组织高层的人都应该能够将这些个案联系起来，并意识到除了人的不法行为之外还有其他原因在起作用。然而，英国邮政总局，尽管知道Horizon计算机系统的可靠性存在问题，仍然拒绝承认自己错了。根据高等法院的说法，英国邮政总局始终坚持认为“地球是平的”。
The price for its dogmatism, it is estimated, could be a settlement bill of around £300 million. Many of those who have fought for justice, often alone and unaware of the scale of the prosecutions, are finally being proved innocent.
据估计，英国邮政总局为自己教条主义付出的代价可能是大约3亿英镑的和解账单。许多为正义而战的人，往往是独自一人，也不知道起诉的规模，最终被证明是无罪的。