7 ms·
It seems like letting a company like Palantir anywhere near private medical data is a pretty bad idea. I am happy NYC is doing this.
by tombert 7mo ago
It seems like letting a company like Palantir anywhere near private medical data is a pretty bad idea. I am happy NYC is doing this.
- Manuel_D 7mo ago[flagged]
- gullies 7mo agoI heard that they lock data by using proprietary formats. MSFT does not do that.
- easterncalculus 7mo agoThey literally did. XLS was proprietary until Microsoft completely cornered the spreadsheet software market.
- drnick1 7mo agoPeople should not use proprietary formats for obvious reasons, but XLS has been largely reverse engineered.
- nradov 7mo agoIn fairness to Microsoft, when the XLS file format was first defined about 40 years ago all of their competitors also used proprietary file formats. Back then open file formats for complex, structured data weren't really a thing. I suppose in theory they could have used SGML but that wouldn't have been very practical given the severely limited hardware resources at the time.
- vovavili 7mo agoLocking users behind proprietary data formats is _literally_ the sole point of Microsoft Office.
- crimsoneer 7mo agoThey very much do not, you can import/export in pretty much any format you want and they've got a well documented sdk. https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/ontology-sdk/python-osdk https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/ontology-sdk/python-os...
- pvtmert 7mo agowhile I understand the meaning here, modern Excel does handover data to Microsoft (via Copilot)...
- OJFord 7mo agoAnd 365 (I'm sure there is an on-premises version, but when not).
- jazzyjackson 7mo agoI really have never heard of on prem 365 deployments, I think any confidentiality is handled via contracted promises with legal ramifications for breaking. With Azure GovCloud for instance there’s no encryption / user key custody on the one drive side, everything you do is uploaded to Microsoft and they maintain keys, they just hire people who passed a background check to run the infrastructure, US nationals only etc
- Spooky23 7mo agoThere is on prem office. Government and 365 is weird. Non-military entities use “Government Community Cloud”, which is an environment where data is stored in segmented areas of Microsoft data centers, but everything else is on commercial infrastructure. You absolutely can host keys as a customer. The Microsoft approach to all of this stuff is insane.
- jazzyjackson 7mo agoGood to know, I shouldn't be surprised anything is possible once you get into having an account executive catering to you.
- Manuel_D 7mo agoUsers choose whether to use Copilot, and are free to decline it's use.
- 7mo ago
- guywithahat 7mo agoIn some regards I'd almost rather Palantir runs it, since the DoW would force them to implement very strict data isolation features which hospitals could then get for free. I wouldn't imagine Epic Healthcare Systems would be forced to isolate data so aggressively. That said I also recognize the moral dilemma and understand why they'd pull out. Frankly I'm surprised they did much work with hospitals at all
- nradov 7mo agoMost Epic products aggressively isolate data. The majority of instances are run on-premises, and even those hosted on cloud platforms are single-tenant. They have a good record for data security and privacy; afaik all Epic data breaches were actually caused by infiltration of other customer systems.
- foxes 7mo ago[flagged]
- Manuel_D 7mo agoNo, but I am curious why this one company gets some much hate. I can get being politically opposed to the conservative politics of some of its founders, but the vast majority of conservative-founded companies don't get nearly as much criticism. A lot of it is seriously borderline Q-anon levels of conspiratorial talk. Just look at the comment in this thread insinuating that Peter Thiel is going to assassinate people with orbital weapons.
- tombert 7mo agoAlex Karp is a deeply unlikable human who talks about how his software is used to kill people, and that he wants to drop a lot of fentanyl-laced urine across all the negative reporters.
- detourdog 7mo agoAlso he has stated that critics should be sprayed with fentanyl laced urine. https://www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/2026/02/17/palantir-piss/ https://www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/2026/02/17/palantir-piss/ Why should we feel good about him running any company.
- polski-g 7mo agoDo you think there are zero people on earth who need to be killed?
- jazzyjackson 7mo agoCertainly we do not need to make those decisions based on fuzzy vector search, probably how the opening salvo of the Iran war ended up killing a hundred school girls
- schubidubiduba 7mo ago
- fsflover 7mo agoMicrosoft can't guarantee data sovereignty – OVHcloud says 'We told you so' (theregister.com) 76 points by fauigerzigerk 6 months ago | 7 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45061153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45061153
- Lucasoato 7mo agoThis isn’t accurate, Palantir business model includes mass surveillance for military/security purposes; if a company is concerned with privacy should think twice before handling it to Palantir, even if with all the assurances they might give in terms of data governance.
- basket_horse 7mo agoThis is like saying a Swiss bank would share your secrets because shady people use Swiss banks. No. Confidentiality is literally built into their business model. Getting caught sharing customer data is one of the fastest ways for their business to crumble.
- croon 7mo agoBeing a customer of a bank and being in a Palantir dataset is not the same. The people in the data are not the customers of Palantir.
- fzeroracer 7mo agoHow many times are we gonna have to see businesses get caught sharing customer data before we learn to not just trust them?
- NetMageSCW 7mo agoWhat software from what companies do you use to store your personal data?
- timacles 7mo agoI’m sorry what? Confidentiality is built into palantirs business model? Do you even know who Palantir is? Your analogy makes zero sense What’s up with all these Palantir shills in this thread
- basket_horse 7mo agoHow does it not make sense? Companies all over the world trust their proprietary data with Palantir platforms. There’s no way they would do this if they thought Palantir was actually sharing data without their approval. If they were found out to have done this, companies would cease to trust Palantir and stop working with them
- QuadmasterXLII 7mo agoIt’s named evil corp. On purpose.
- QuantumGood 7mo ago[dead]
- catoc 7mo agoYou’re calling people who critique Palantir “borderline Q-Anon” ? While you yourself think Palantir’s products are “like Excel” ? They are not. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...
- Manuel_D 7mo ago[flagged]
- fn-mote 7mo agoThat linked thread doesn’t support your argument. Re-read it.
- therobots927 7mo agoQ anon was wrong about the details but at a high level a lot of it was confirmed by the Epstein files. Peter Thiel shows up A LOT in those files. I don’t think it’s out of the question that he would use palantir’s data to assassinate people.
- gunalx 7mo agoWell, they are to some degree.
- lukewarm707 7mo agoif custody is with the customer.....why does palantir have compute pricing..... hmmmmmm
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> Palantir builds software that customers use to work with their own data After DOGE, a movement Palantir aided [1], I think it's fair for folks to wonder to what degree these firms have been infiltrated by extremists. Someone who will convince themselves that exporting data to ICE or the Proud Boys—like the names of every New Yorker whose medical records say they are gay, circumcised or have had an abortion—is the right thing to do. (Or at least funny and inconsequential.) It's a risk. Not a conclusion. But given Palantir's offering is becoming less differentiated by the day, I think it's fair for people to look for alternatives. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-doge-irs-mega-api-data/ https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-doge-irs-mega-api-data/
- slater 7mo ago> Custody of the data remains with the customer pinky promise?
- fluidcruft 7mo agoAccording to the article: > It also includes a line stating that with permission from the city agency, Palantir can “de-identify” patients’ protected health information and use it for “purposes other than research”. Under HIPPA, "research" has a very specific definition which renders "purposes other than research" quite broad. Yes, it's "with permission" but it does depend on the city agency fully understanding what ancillary things Palantir can do with de-identified data once it has left the covered entity and without further explicit permission.
- text0404 7mo agoThe concern is more with the tools that Palantir creates around the domains they service. They analyze, predict, and shape decisions using unproven technology. Palantir controls insights, models, and outcomes, and given the anti-democratic and frankly unhinged extremist worldviews of the founders, it's highly concerning to allow them to create tools for sensitive and nuanced data that have life or death consequences.
- Manuel_D 7mo ago> Palantir controls insights, models, and outcomes, No, Palantir's customers are the ones gleaning insights. To re-use the Excel analogy, this is like saying Microsoft is controlling insights and outcomes because organization use Excel.
- text0404 7mo agoPalantir's products are not Excel. Palantir's founders and executives are well aware of what their tools are designed for and what they enable, and they're proud of their role. As far as I know, Microsoft executives don't brag about Excel being used to create a unified "kill chain" [1], nor do they market software intended for targeting for weapons of mass destruction [2], nor do they claim that their products are designed for use in lethal military operations [3]. As much as you'd like to hand-waive away their role, a war profiteer is a war profiteer. IBM also used to just make computers to manage supply chains in WW2; who they sold it to, the purposes it was used for, and why they sold it is still important. Based on interviews, Thiel and Karp are gleeful about their role in the military-industrial complex and embrace it [4], so likening their products to Excel is disingenuous at best. [1] https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/ https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam... [3] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Palantir-defends-its-role-in-the-kill-chain-We-are-very-very-proud-of-that-11211275.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Palantir-defends-its-role-in-th... [4] https://futurism.com/future-society/palantir-ceo-war-crimes https://futurism.com/future-society/palantir-ceo-war-crimes
- themafia 7mo ago> Custody of the data remains with the customer. Yea.. like.. how, though? Here are their setup instructions. It seems pretty clear what is happening to your data, and an unqualified statement that you maintain some nebulous idea of "custody" seems oblivious to even simple risk. https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/data-connection/initial-setup-overview https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/data-connection/initia... This isn't even getting into their "forward deployed software engineers" or how that whole aspect of their "product" works.
- WatchDog 7mo agoYou can run it on-prem, where you can actually technologically enforce data custody. Custody enforcement using the cloud hosted product, is mostly contractual, although they do offer some technical features, like encrypting all data using a AWS KMS key in the customer's AWS account. Still, this relies on trusting that they won't make their own separate copies of the data.
- mdni007 7mo agoWhy would anyone knowingly use Isreali spyware?