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'Some believe that it is access to NHS data, among the most lucrative data sets in the world, that is the real attraction here'. ...“We must beware Palantir –

'Some believe that it is access to NHS data, among the most lucrative data sets in the world, that is the real attraction here'. ...“We must beware Palantir – and any other data mining company – bearing gifts during a pandemic,” says Ioannis Kouvakas, legal officer at Privacy International.

jackpeterfletch 6y ago
TBF - NHS barely has access to NHS data, so good luck with that.
- lmeyerov 6y ago
  Yeah the bigger issue is similar to US Health and Human Services, where the basic consulting model was to take ownership of the core data pipelines & tools and ultimately own the org's data future. We basically don't engage with any org where palantir bought out the decision making. IMO most CIO/CTOs are losing the long-term relevance of their parents org if they give away their data future. Not just a problem with Palantir; the biggest consulting orgs all lobby hard to displace internal ownership with themselves. Nowadays often a revolving door. Where NHS is on that journey, no idea.
  - nojito 6y ago
    US health data is very transparent and has been publicly available for years.
    - lmeyerov 6y ago
      Some of it is, but unfortunately, not what I'm talking about. I'm less worried about spying (funny enough, I bet Palantir has better data privacy than most orgs) and FOIAs and more about IT collapse based on the digital transformation strategy lobbying. US gov data pipelines are often managed by big private contractors, and in cases like Palantir, build them as well. The result is lock-in that's way worse than say Oracle DB's: both the DB + SW + projects end up owned by the contractor. Ex: a gov team once had to sue Palantir for the ability to get interop across some data/projects. Having been involved in seeing how sw gets selected, once a big consulting firm (and worse, one with custom sw) gets in, they grow and its hard to do anything that's not them. They bring in quick digital transform, but with the side-effect of slowly suffocating the org.
      - nojito 6y ago
        Most if not all of the useful data is publicly available. It’s just painful to collect, organize, and make use out of. Which is why there are always startups and companies like palantir that come along once in a while before the us realizes they are a waste and moves on.
        lmeyerov 6y ago
        That's not true at all: - data: most data for anything at the level for fraud investigations isn't open, open is very coarse. Operational is generally closed. - tools: these orgs then own the tools ecosystems, which further completes practical low-level layers of the lockin I'm not sure why the effort to misrepresent, or maybe you come from a special use case..
PaulWaldman 6y ago
They may have access to it, but how can they monitize it beyond services directly for the NHS? Is it wrong to assume that just having access to the data does not mean Planatir can use it to benefit parties other than the NHS?
- grey-area 6y ago
  Sell the data to spy agencies?
- madaxe_again 6y ago
  Based on the parties involved here, it’ll be used to control the outcome of elections to ensure the Tories keep in power forever. The guy running it, Mosley, is the grandson of Oswald Mosley - founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists - “Hooray for the blackshirts” and all that. He’s a “Tory activist”, which basically means he would like to see a fascist white ethnostate. I’m not exaggerating. This is who the Tories have become - the party of brexit, of isolationism, of eugenics, of corrupt in-dealing, arbitrary justice, and “hostile environments”. Literally every name in there is someone associated with the far right. There’s also prior form to this end - see the as yet unresolved and probably never to be resolved hoo-hah over Cambridge analytica. This smells like Cummings and his gang.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    > I’m not exaggerating He said, exaggerating.
    - madaxe_again 6y ago
      No. I went to school with plenty of the clade now in power - one is a cabinet minister, another just an MP, others are Tory activists or were Tory MPs until the last election. The cabinet minister was the most profoundly racist and bigoted person in my year. I won’t repeat the kind of slurs he routinely came out with here, but I will say that he was kicked out of history, repeatedly, for saying “they got what they deserved”, when discussing the holocaust. The MP was suspended for a term for sexual assault. Yes, that’s anecdotal, but it speaks of the character of the type of person attracted to their ideology. In more concrete terms, if you look at what is being said, privately and publicly, what is becoming policy, which dead cats are being thrown at the press, it is extremely worrying.
instagraham 6y ago
This is the most IRL Lord of the Rings dialogue I've ever heard
- prox 6y ago
  “Not everyone in Palantir is accounted for, we don’t know who is watching!” - Gandalf probably
  - v4dok 6y ago
    Or a Privacy guy in UK. Could be both nowadays.

jackpeterfletch 6y ago

TBF - NHS barely has access to NHS data, so good luck with that.

lmeyerov 6y ago
Yeah the bigger issue is similar to US Health and Human Services, where the basic consulting model was to take ownership of the core data pipelines & tools and ultimately own the org's data future. We basically don't engage with any org where palantir bought out the decision making. IMO most CIO/CTOs are losing the long-term relevance of their parents org if they give away their data future. Not just a problem with Palantir; the biggest consulting orgs all lobby hard to displace internal ownership with themselves. Nowadays often a revolving door. Where NHS is on that journey, no idea.
- nojito 6y ago
  US health data is very transparent and has been publicly available for years.
  - lmeyerov 6y ago
    Some of it is, but unfortunately, not what I'm talking about. I'm less worried about spying (funny enough, I bet Palantir has better data privacy than most orgs) and FOIAs and more about IT collapse based on the digital transformation strategy lobbying. US gov data pipelines are often managed by big private contractors, and in cases like Palantir, build them as well. The result is lock-in that's way worse than say Oracle DB's: both the DB + SW + projects end up owned by the contractor. Ex: a gov team once had to sue Palantir for the ability to get interop across some data/projects. Having been involved in seeing how sw gets selected, once a big consulting firm (and worse, one with custom sw) gets in, they grow and its hard to do anything that's not them. They bring in quick digital transform, but with the side-effect of slowly suffocating the org.
    - nojito 6y ago
      Most if not all of the useful data is publicly available. It’s just painful to collect, organize, and make use out of. Which is why there are always startups and companies like palantir that come along once in a while before the us realizes they are a waste and moves on.
      - lmeyerov 6y ago
        That's not true at all: - data: most data for anything at the level for fraud investigations isn't open, open is very coarse. Operational is generally closed. - tools: these orgs then own the tools ecosystems, which further completes practical low-level layers of the lockin I'm not sure why the effort to misrepresent, or maybe you come from a special use case..

PaulWaldman 6y ago

They may have access to it, but how can they monitize it beyond services directly for the NHS? Is it wrong to assume that just having access to the data does not mean Planatir can use it to benefit parties other than the NHS?

grey-area 6y ago
Sell the data to spy agencies?
madaxe_again 6y ago
Based on the parties involved here, it’ll be used to control the outcome of elections to ensure the Tories keep in power forever. The guy running it, Mosley, is the grandson of Oswald Mosley - founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists - “Hooray for the blackshirts” and all that. He’s a “Tory activist”, which basically means he would like to see a fascist white ethnostate. I’m not exaggerating. This is who the Tories have become - the party of brexit, of isolationism, of eugenics, of corrupt in-dealing, arbitrary justice, and “hostile environments”. Literally every name in there is someone associated with the far right. There’s also prior form to this end - see the as yet unresolved and probably never to be resolved hoo-hah over Cambridge analytica. This smells like Cummings and his gang.
- Angostura 6y ago
  > I’m not exaggerating He said, exaggerating.
  - madaxe_again 6y ago
    No. I went to school with plenty of the clade now in power - one is a cabinet minister, another just an MP, others are Tory activists or were Tory MPs until the last election. The cabinet minister was the most profoundly racist and bigoted person in my year. I won’t repeat the kind of slurs he routinely came out with here, but I will say that he was kicked out of history, repeatedly, for saying “they got what they deserved”, when discussing the holocaust. The MP was suspended for a term for sexual assault. Yes, that’s anecdotal, but it speaks of the character of the type of person attracted to their ideology. In more concrete terms, if you look at what is being said, privately and publicly, what is becoming policy, which dead cats are being thrown at the press, it is extremely worrying.

instagraham 6y ago

This is the most IRL Lord of the Rings dialogue I've ever heard

prox 6y ago
“Not everyone in Palantir is accounted for, we don’t know who is watching!” - Gandalf probably
- v4dok 6y ago
  Or a Privacy guy in UK. Could be both nowadays.