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There seems to be an effort to cultivate controversy about this because a section of the establishment hate Mr Thiel. If you are going to have a database then

There seems to be an effort to cultivate controversy about this because a section of the establishment hate Mr Thiel. If you are going to have a database then people are going to access it. A private company that you hire specifically for that purpose with expertise in not having much more serious information leak is one of your better options. I mean, would we trust the major other IT or cloud vendors with this either?

7thaccount 3y ago
Or maybe people don't want their health data to go to some AI training dataset run by a company working with law enforcement and the military?
justinclift 3y ago
Just because we wouldn't trust some of the others, doesn't mean that this crowd (with an extensively documented poor history) should be given the contract instead. How about finding some crowd that does actually deserve public trust, or barring that... choose "no winning bidder"?
jen20 3y ago
The notion that this kind of thing need to go to any foreign company whatsoever instead of the excellent NHS Information Centre is idiotic. The fact that it’s going to Thiel is bad, but not the root cause of anger among those who actually know something about this area.
anonzzzies 3y ago
They could start with a company actually in the UK. That would make people safer as at least they cannot easily retreat to the US and that’s it.
- maeil 3y ago
  This argument can be made about any US digital tool that stores data. I'm sure >99.9% of NHS employees use Apple and Google Android phones, which likely have access to their emails. Office365? Is there even a reasonable UK office suite? Seems to me like both emails and Office docs will contain plenty of stuff about patients. It might be a good idea for them to look for UK companies first but using Palantir or not is unlikely to materially change anything. To think that when push comes to shove Microsoft or Google (see Nest for one example) is less aligned to the US government than Palantir seems naive, if that's the fundamental reason you have in mind.
  - jen20 3y ago
    And you’d be wrong on almost all counts. The NHS runs on the N3 network, and runs its own email servers. Emailing outside of the organization about patients is a sackable offence. As for mobile devices: I seriously doubt unless security has gone to shit in the last few years that people have access to clinical email on personal devices. If they have the devices will be under MDM. I’d rather they moved everything to Linux of course, but placing trust in Microsoft is a hell of a lot better than placing trust in Palantir. Microsoft have reputation to lose. The reputation of Palantir among its core audience is improved by misdeeds.
    - maeil 3y ago
      > And you’d be wrong on almost all counts. The NHS runs on the N3 network, and runs its own email servers. Emailing outside of the organization about patients is a sackable offence. In that case I'd assume Palantir's software too will run on the N3 network. This might well be a big reason for the choice for them, Im sure they have plenty of experience with such arragements given all the military contracts. > I’d rather they moved everything to Linux of course, but placing trust in Microsoft is a hell of a lot better than placing trust in Palantir. Microsoft have reputation to lose. The reputation of Palantir among its core audience is improved by misdeeds. The core audience of Palantir is their customers, who are very unhappy when they get into the news negatively. They're a big business, not an influencer trying to keep their Twitter fanboys happy. Like you're implying the NHS is almost certainly running Windows (or MacOS for that matter) everywhere and neither did you mention their Office suite. MS and Palantir are very comparably tied to the US , which was the point brought up that I was responding to.
jmye 3y ago
I would imagine some of the backlash comes from giving the data to someone who hates the NHS, and because of things like (FTA) “Those details included political and religious affiliation and past criminal offenses, according to a copy of the documents published by politics website OpenDemocracy and the group Foxglove at the time.” Is there some reason why Palantir is a better option than someone with more extensive experience with healthcare data? Or within the NHS?

7thaccount 3y ago

Or maybe people don't want their health data to go to some AI training dataset run by a company working with law enforcement and the military?

justinclift 3y ago

Just because we wouldn't trust some of the others, doesn't mean that this crowd (with an extensively documented poor history) should be given the contract instead. How about finding some crowd that does actually deserve public trust, or barring that... choose "no winning bidder"?

jen20 3y ago

The notion that this kind of thing need to go to any foreign company whatsoever instead of the excellent NHS Information Centre is idiotic. The fact that it’s going to Thiel is bad, but not the root cause of anger among those who actually know something about this area.

anonzzzies 3y ago

They could start with a company actually in the UK. That would make people safer as at least they cannot easily retreat to the US and that’s it.

maeil 3y ago
This argument can be made about any US digital tool that stores data. I'm sure >99.9% of NHS employees use Apple and Google Android phones, which likely have access to their emails. Office365? Is there even a reasonable UK office suite? Seems to me like both emails and Office docs will contain plenty of stuff about patients. It might be a good idea for them to look for UK companies first but using Palantir or not is unlikely to materially change anything. To think that when push comes to shove Microsoft or Google (see Nest for one example) is less aligned to the US government than Palantir seems naive, if that's the fundamental reason you have in mind.
- jen20 3y ago
  And you’d be wrong on almost all counts. The NHS runs on the N3 network, and runs its own email servers. Emailing outside of the organization about patients is a sackable offence. As for mobile devices: I seriously doubt unless security has gone to shit in the last few years that people have access to clinical email on personal devices. If they have the devices will be under MDM. I’d rather they moved everything to Linux of course, but placing trust in Microsoft is a hell of a lot better than placing trust in Palantir. Microsoft have reputation to lose. The reputation of Palantir among its core audience is improved by misdeeds.
  - maeil 3y ago
    > And you’d be wrong on almost all counts. The NHS runs on the N3 network, and runs its own email servers. Emailing outside of the organization about patients is a sackable offence. In that case I'd assume Palantir's software too will run on the N3 network. This might well be a big reason for the choice for them, Im sure they have plenty of experience with such arragements given all the military contracts. > I’d rather they moved everything to Linux of course, but placing trust in Microsoft is a hell of a lot better than placing trust in Palantir. Microsoft have reputation to lose. The reputation of Palantir among its core audience is improved by misdeeds. The core audience of Palantir is their customers, who are very unhappy when they get into the news negatively. They're a big business, not an influencer trying to keep their Twitter fanboys happy. Like you're implying the NHS is almost certainly running Windows (or MacOS for that matter) everywhere and neither did you mention their Office suite. MS and Palantir are very comparably tied to the US , which was the point brought up that I was responding to.

jmye 3y ago

I would imagine some of the backlash comes from giving the data to someone who hates the NHS, and because of things like (FTA) “Those details included political and religious affiliation and past criminal offenses, according to a copy of the documents published by politics website OpenDemocracy and the group Foxglove at the time.” Is there some reason why Palantir is a better option than someone with more extensive experience with healthcare data? Or within the NHS?