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NHS apologises and admits Palantir have access to identifiable patient data
- bananaflag 2mo agoNow the deed is done, one cannot undo it.
- LtWorf 2mo agoMany years ago I had a job offer in UK and a friend who was already living there who was very keen on me moving there. Honestly every single time there is news about UK, I am glad I didn't take the offer. Then again, me being already not very enthusiastic about the place had a role in my decision.
- gambiting 2mo agoI mean, it's all a matter of perspective and where you are coming from. Like, I could easily say that literally any piece of news coming from the US makes me not want to move there no matter how much money you pay me. But at the end of the day, it's just news. It's like that whole panic about London being the most surveiled city in the world with the most cameras per capita in the world - and of course neglecting to mention that most of these cameras are in private hands and police don't have access to them. Get your car or bike stolen in London and discover that no, the police cannot just track them street by street like in James Bond. I literally had someone ask me the other day if it's safe to go to London. Like, to visit as a tourist. We've reached some level of absurdity that is almost comedic, but that's what news does to people.
- LtWorf 2mo agoBut hold a sign against the king and find out that the police has all the necessary information to find and arrest you :)
- gambiting 2mo agoYou mean like those few people arrested for disturbing peace during the Queen's funeral/coronation of the King? Yeah, that shouldn't have happened and courts have generally agreed that it was a police overreach. But I can assure you that you can go around london protesting the King with whatever banner you want and you won't get arrested - in fact people do daily with no consequences. And don't get me wrong - some of the laws around this are insane. But flattening the entire country to focus on one issue is like...not exactly fair? It's like me saying I won't ever move to Sweden because your public sector employees are required to report suspected illegal immigrants(even UK doesn't go that far!). The "oh I won't take a job in the UK because someone got arrested protesting the king" is a stance, for sure - I just don't know if any country in the world would meet your high moral standard.
- LtWorf 2mo ago> You mean like those few people arrested for disturbing peace during the Queen's funeral/coronation of the King? I mean like those who asked for the permit to hold a protest, got the permit and then got arrested anyway… You'd think it was NK and instead…
- gambiting 2mo agoNot heard of that one. >>You'd think it was NK I mean, only someone who knows literally nothing about either the UK or NK would think that, but I guess on the internet you are free to think anything you want.
- happymellon 2mo agoBecause Palantir have government contracts? Seriously? You claim to be in Sweden, then you should surely know that Palantir are very much in bed with the government there including police monitoring.
- LtWorf 2mo agoAt least you don't get arrested for protesting in the streets in sweden, unlike UK…
- happymellon 2mo agoKeep moving those goal posts! https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/zAvve4/palestinademonstration-stoppat-i-centrala-stockholm https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/zAvve4/palestinademonst... Getting arrested because you protested about the wrong subject in the wrong place and didn't disperse because of not having the right licence?
- LtWorf 2mo agoBut, I'm talking about an event that had prior authorisation in UK… it seems it's you who doesn't fit the original goalposts?
- happymellon 2mo agoNot what you said. > At least you don't get arrested for protesting in the streets in sweden, unlike UK… People protesting in the street in Sweden are arrested. It is a direct rebuttal to your statement. If you want to add additional provisos after you are demonstrably wrong go ahead, but it does make you less serious.
- jpfromlondon 2mo ago>In all cases they do not have permission to use the data for their own purposes Oh, they don't have permission? probably fine then.
- Oras 2mo agoInsert "this is fine" meme
- andrewstuart 2mo agoDefinitely fine. All the Palantir employees have read that clause of course. In Australia when the biggest health insurer had ALL patient records stolen, the Board of Directors immediately granted themselves very large cash bonuses (true).
- oliwarner 2mo agoWhile I agree, permission still means something. If they're found to have held onto it, processed it or shared it, they'll be told off very sternly and asked politely to not do it again.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo agoSternly? Hey hey hey, let's not go overboard here.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- tcp_handshaker 2mo agoThey are sharing it with several other customers of theirs but in a smart way, pretending is done via discovery of their ontology tool and for other countries also... You heard it here first. I realized this by talking to several recently hired graduates at several startups. I was shocked at the amount of startups spending money on Palantir. It seems right now, every dumb founder with no idea or market fit, and a lot of dumb money is buying their tools. There is a spending AI bubble, and then there is a parallel mini Palantir buy bubble...
- jascination 2mo agoThis is insanely fucked up, but also unsurprising.
- numpad0 2mo agoIs Palantir obsessed with medical records? If so why? This is worrying as there recently was a change in the Japanese PII law, relatively unceremoniously passed and enacted, that reclassify mass PII collection including medical data collection as anonymous and consent-free with the condition that anonymization is performed after collection, which, IMO, IANAL, completely nullify the PII law. I can easily "see" Palantir behind it with my tinfoil hat on, but I'm not sure why do anyone want it in the first place. I don't think they need medical data specifically to take people to the back and dispose of the body.
- gambiting 2mo agoI'm guessing because insurance companies would love to put their hands on that data, so it can be repackaged and sold off. Or Palantir can offer a model trained on it, so it's not technically selling the data itself.
- kotaKat 2mo ago> Is Palantir obsessed with medical records? If so why? Daddy Thiel needs a bloodbank. The last one mysteriously died under the guise of a 'suicide'. https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.html https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.h...
- numpad0 2mo agoThat's so stupid that it makes total sense. Why can't they just hit deep South Asian scam malls and order a few "pigs" if that's what they want... the whole thing is so low effort. Thanks.
- gambiting 2mo agoSo, what is going to happen now? Someone in the UK government goes "ooops, sorry" and Palantir gets to keep access to this data? Or are we just going to have another 10 year long enquiry of how exactly this happened that leads to no consequences for anyone while US company siphons up our personal info, again?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo agoNothing happens, is what happens.
- bothers 2mo ago>“We recognise that the DPIA contained an error in how it described supplier access to data so we are correcting that error, and we apologise for any confusion this has caused,” the NHS said. They're not sorry that Palantir has the data, they're sorry you found out Palantir has the data. Don't worry though, 'unequivical guidance' has been issued by a committee.
- hollow-moe 2mo ago"Whoops sorrgy! Your honor, I plead silly :3c"
- runtime_lens 2mo ago[flagged]
- alexisread 2mo agoWow this was moved fast off the frontpage! Now on page 3 after 50min. Just FYI.
- alexisread 2mo agoAnd this comment is being downvoted as well to hide the fact.
- robin_reala 2mo agoI was wondering. Usually if something drops a couple of pages suddenly it’s because of the flamewar trigger: the number of comments exceeding the number of upvotes is a proxy measure for something not designed to elucidate meaningful discussion. Here, it dropped when it got to ~90 upvotes to 15 comments, so it wasn’t that trigger. Maybe as it’s a UK-specific story the concentrated geographical voting pattern triggered a voting-ring trigger?
- graysnow86 2mo agoYeah, I caught it on the refresh! Makes one wonder what the impetus was for the change...
- CamperBob2 2mo agoTBF, if an evil SPECTRE-level corporation with global tentacles and Tolkien-inspired omniscience can't manage to quash some bad PR on Hacker News, none of its prospective customers would take it seriously.
- clydethefrog 2mo agoLRB had a great article about Palantir and the NHS in their latest issue. [1] What I mostly enjoyed reading is the insight that their actual software is quite "rubbish", something I have seen people mention in discussions here, especially in the early years of Palantir before it became more notorious and well-known. I do believe the "evil company" is part of their marketing to cover up that they are your usual proprietary software with a shitty UI and expensive contract that is being sold to clueless upper management. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n13/peter-geoghegan-and-lucas-amin/this-looks-absolutely-rubbish https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n13/peter-geoghegan-and-...
- qmmmur 2mo agoOh well, at least they apologised.
- penguin_booze 2mo agoPalantir: The Japanese Knot Weed of technology.