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Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoHeadline could use some help, dang, it's really not representative of the full story: "The contract, known as a data-sharing agreement, was published Friday by politics website OpenDemocracy and law firm Foxglove alongside similar contracts with Google, Microsoft, and U.K. AI start-up Faculty." "The contracts show Palantir charged only £1 ($1.27) for use of its Foundry data management software while Google offered “technical, advisory and other support” for free." This is about a lot more than just Palantir. And the NHS has been in hot water for handing out sensitive patient data to tech firms before. :/
- heavenlyblue 6y agoThey teach you in Project Management in UK universities that one of the biggest IT failures was this project by NHS. Nobody tells you that they've replaced these failures with a £1 data-dumping contract to a dodgy company.
- an_opabinia 6y ago> And the NHS has been in hot water for handing out sensitive patient data to tech firms before. Without the perspective of someone who works in the NHS with Palantir's software, it's impossible to say if the NHS and the public got a good deal.
- mschuster91 6y agoNo matter how usable and helpful the software is for the front line workers, the fact remains that Palantir has extensive access to the medical and according to the article also criminal history of everyone in the UK. Who can promise that there are no side channels to the USA or no covert exfiltration using "backups" or "integration systems"?
- nojito 6y agoWhy would palantir risk their EU business by breaking the trust of the contract and move information to the US?
- mschuster91 6y agoBecause this shit has literally happened before, only with GE being responsible instead of Palantir. https://www.itpro.co.uk/640090/ge-healthcare-comes-clean-over-nhs-data-leak https://www.itpro.co.uk/640090/ge-healthcare-comes-clean-ove... In other cases, data has been outright sold: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/07/nhs-medical-data-sales-american-pharma-lack-transparency https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/07/nhs-medical... And what do you think why Palantir and the other offer their services for one pound?! It's all about that data. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-apple-amazon-nhs-health-data https://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-apple-amazon-nhs-heal...
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoBecause the NHS is about to be sold off as part of Brexit, and they can profit hugely from a slice of that action, while pretending they followed the rules until Brexit was completed.
- dekhn 6y agoI haven't seen any plans to privatize NHS as part of Brexit (and it's not clear why the two would be related, anyway).
- baylisscg 6y agoThe removal of EU legislation from British law and the UK-US trade deal. With the US demanding it's healthcare and pharma unfettered access to the NHS on terms equivalent to current US not UK standards. The UK is not, technically, slapping a FOR SALE sign on the NHS they've just put themselves in a position where pretty much anyone and everyone can demand a slice. Of course this assumes that the current gonverment doesn't view the NHS as an asset to be strip mined which I'm damn sure they do.
- physicsguy 6y agoIn English Law (and in many other jurisdictions) it's only a legal contract if "consideration" is given by both parties; i.e. Palantir here must charge something in return for it to be an enforceable contract.
- kjaftaedi 6y agoThe UK is still under EU law, as they haven't fully exited yet. The citizens would still have to agree to allowing their personal data to be processed by third-parties and consent for their data to be processed outside the EU. Is there any evidence that this consent was given?
- secfirstmd 6y agoThe UK government may try to wiggle out of it by using the GDPR exemptions related to research and/or national security https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/
- jamesRaybould 6y agoHas anyone tried to do a GDPR request yet to either see what data they actually hold, or to test the right to erasure?
- L_226 6y agoActually good question, I would like to know how these requests are handled post Brexit. Do A.13 GDPR requests still have to be honoured by the UK up to the Brexit date forever?
- djaychela 6y agoGDPR is still in force until the end of the transition period (I think Dec 31). What will change after then, who knows? I don't think I've seen anything coherent on any front from the government at this point.
- mnw21cam 6y agoIt will require parliament to actually enact a law to cancel GDPR in order for it to change.
- desas 6y agoThe Data Protection Act 2018 essentially copies the gdpr into UK law, tweaks the corners where allowed under gdpr and adds afew other things.
- fyfy18 6y agoThis is the case for many EU laws - depending on the area [0], laws agreed upon in Brussels don't actually mean anything on their own, but member countries are required to write them into their own law. After Brexit happens such laws will still apply, as they have been written into UK law. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-commission/what-european-commission-does/law/areas-eu-action_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-commission/what-eur...
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- thedudeabides5 6y agoFunny how no one wants to talk about the reason that the NHS is doing these deals. Of all the competent devs / data analyst in the UK, how many do you think actually want to work at the NHS? So lots of demand / need (healthcare is a mess in part because of data management via paper) and no supply / interest of talent.
- marcinzm 6y agoI think many people talk about it but from a different context. The NHS is being de-funded by the same politicians whose friends benefit from these deals. Hard to hire competent people when your budget keeps getting cut.
- google234123 6y ago£136.7 billion seems like a lot. It also seems like it's been exponentially going up since 1950.
- marcinzm 6y agoThat comes out to $2k/year/UK resident which is amazingly low I'd say. Staff are also limited to 1% salary increase per year since 2010 which is below inflation.
- ben_w 6y ago“Exponential” is almost certainly a good approximation, as I expect it to match the product of wage inflation and population.
- lostlogin 6y agoCompare that to systems which are not nationalised.
- iso1631 6y agoHealthcare spending per capital for G7, note how the UK has historically been at the bottom, way below Germany, let alone the u.s. https://i.imgur.com/iab51Zq.png https://i.imgur.com/iab51Zq.png From OECD https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
- nickff 6y agoThe article text seems to indicate that Palantir was offering data analysis software/services to the British government for a nominal fee. It doesn't seem like NHS was selling the data, they just needed some services, and paying £1 was required to bind Palantir in a contract. This title really seems like click-bait.
- monadic2 6y agoThe title is literally correct, I don’t see any clickbait.
- nickff 6y agoWell it's technically correct, but the government wasn't giving access to Palantir as a favor, they were purchasing data analysis SaaS.
- cool_dude85 6y agoSorry, they purchased it for £1? Now who's being "technically correct"?
- nickff 6y ago>" Sorry, they purchased it for £1? Now who's being "technically correct"? " Palantir received one pound; the government paid Palantir for software. The title implies that the government was selling the data, but they were actually getting SaaS for a pittance.
- nathanlied 6y agoThe title could be fixed from "in £1 deal" to "as part of £1 deal". No ambiguity there, although it doesn't adequately explain how that came about, but that's why there's an article.
- monadic2 6y agoHonestly that distinction had never even occurred to me—I was envisioning possible concern over giving access to sensitive personal information to a for-profit multinational.
- 6c696e7578 6y agoWhy are some pages scanned and some plain text?
- gpvos 6y agoTwo documents pasted together?
- seesawtron 6y agoI do not see in the contract uploaded that UK govt is sharing personal contact details as the article claims. Can someone see if this has actually happened or is CNBC exaggerating?
- code4tee 6y agoThe data for use in model training is worth far more to Palantir. They can spin it as being nice and helping with COVID-19 but in reality Palantir couldn’t buy this data even if they wanted to... so they got the U.K. government to give it to them! Clever.
- 908087 6y agoThey used the Google playbook here. NHS seems happy to hand patient data over to US surveillance corporations without patient consent.
- draugadrotten 6y agoJust wait a year or two and you'll find that somebody with influence on the decision gets a well paid cushy job in the private sector. Perhaps one of those 200K-per-appearance type jobs as a "senior advisor" for a bank.
- ng12 6y agoFrom my understanding Foundry (the Palantir product in question) is just a data management platform. I don't understand why this is so nefarious: they gave software they usually charge for to a public health agency for free.
- lostlogin 6y agoThe section on controversies is a primer. It certainly seems worth questioning the intent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies
- ng12 6y agoPalantir already works with a a huge number government agencies is my point. They're basically a contracting firm. If they had charged the NHS at least a few hundred thousand pounds it wouldn't have been newsworthy.
- sbeedge 6y agoThis makes me really f*cking angry.
- Barrin92 6y agoHonestly borders to me on being de-facto undemocratic because I doubt a lot of British citizens are aware of this or that there has been any sort of meaningful consent given by patients to outsource their data to a foreign intelligence firm. When it comes to how to solve this I really think we need to fundamentally rethink data ownership both on a legal as well at a technical level. I was recently reading up on Tim Berners-Lee's SOLID and I think something like that should be the default for all our data. We store our own healthcare data in something akin to a pod, when the NHS uses that data they get access to it granted by the patient in a way that puts formal limits on what they can do with it and how long they have access to it, and I as the patient have both the right and technical ability to revoke that access. We really need to push for data ownership and strong guarantees for data rather than this through the backdoor process of shoving private health data to unaccountable firms. Maybe this is something where all these smart contract and decentralisation technologies can play a meaningful role rather than being primarily used for speculative currencies.
- ran3824692 6y ago> in a way that puts formal limits on what they can do with it and how long they have access to it, and I as the patient have both the right and technical ability to revoke that access If that's what SOLID is, its a scam and more of his DRM promotion. There is no technical way to "revoke my access." Unless you have a memory erasing implant in my brain, if the data gets onto my screen, I can copy it and access it forever. Period. Fuck Tim Berners-Lee.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ozborn 6y agoData use agreements often specify under what terms the data is held and destroyed. While people may still remember some data, the usual use case is large databases that can't be memorized. If someone revokes that data, that data would need to be removed from the database and all associated downstream copies. Failure to comply would open the door to legal penalties, which is the real stick. Imagine for example, if the US or UK governments took corporate misuse of personal health data (https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760935/google-medical-data-lawsuit-university-of-chicago-2017-inappropriate-access https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760935/google-medical-d...) as seriously as they currently takes video copyright violations by individuals....
- soufron 6y agoPseudo-patronage, or charity-software, it's the new model being pushed by GAFAM (and Palantir) in order to access to digital public services markets in the EU. It's quite certainly illegal though - procurement regulations, etc., but nobody seems to care, especially not in the local software industry. No wonder the EU are so much behind when it comes to digital industry. They don't even try to fight.
- bhupy 6y agoHow is this any different from Amazon offering the NHS Amazon RDS licenses for free/£1? Is the argument against this that the NHS not be allowed to use any cloud infrastructure, and that everything ought to be on-premise?
- zentiggr 6y agoRather than being some ostensibly neutral cloud, Palantir was/is CIA funded. So data straight into CIA/NSA/whomevers hands.
- bhupy 6y agoAs far as I'm aware, Palantir is basically a SaaS data analytics provider for governments all over the world. Why would any government consent to working with Palantir if they had any suspicion that their data might be used by US government clandestine agencies?
- jen20 6y agoAWS do not have the legal right to use data in an RDS-managed database, and there would be hell to pay in terms of off-AWS migrations if they were ever found to be using customer data where they claim not to. Palantir is not a "cloud service" in the same way.
- bhupy 6y agoStructurally speaking, what mechanism prevents Amazon from being able to access RDS-managed customer data that doesn't prevent Palantir from doing the same? As far as I'm aware, Palantir doesn't claim to share data between its customers. It works with governments all over the world — ostensibly this means that either Palantir agrees to not share its customers data with other customers, or every government is implicitly consenting to their citizens' data being accessed by every other government.
- gentleman11 6y agoThe UK is trusting an American national security-related firm with patient data, one that has to secretly accept any data access requests from the Americans. The UK should stick with their own companies for this sort of work - same for other countries
- xenospn 6y agoHas Palantir had any type of positive headline associated with it, ever?
- surfsvammel 6y agoDisturbing. When you cannot even trust your own health-care system and government to even have the ambition to safeguard your sensitive data. What are citizens supposed to do? It’s tragic how democracy have been so deeply undermined by private interests. This is not how it was supposed to work. Truly a disgrace.
- maa5444 6y agoas usual... when services are for free... you are the product of any value