In 2023, the then-Conservative government awarded Palantir with a £330m contract to “build a new NHS data platform”. The move proved controversial because Palantir is a US spy tech firm and its co-founder Peter Thiel is a prominent Trump donor with links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now, a trove of leaked emails have shone further light on Thiel’s connections.
The fuck is the NHS doing even talking to Palantir? That’s nuts.
the commoditization of personal data
NHS England has tens of millions of patients. Most patient records are undigitised and must be couriered when patients move to a new area or when specialist care is required.
It’s also a huge, publicly funded service so big data can be crunched to improve outcomes and efficiencies.
Palantir wanted a big system to use as the testbed for its move into healthcare data systems and offered a low bid.
Do y’all not have any software engineers domestically? I thought you invented the whole ordeal?
There does appear to be some funny business going on.
Unless I am presented with contradictory evidence (I am not accepting feedback) I will assume nobody over there is willing to program a machine of any type out of fear that their balls will be cut off by the government like daddy Turing’s were.
Edit: (to be clear, I’m just taking the piss. Please for the love of dog, do not touch Palantir with even the tip of any of your extremities.)
The UK has been doing some seriously batshit things lately. Obviously we’re not ones to talk but - yeah. It’s sad.
Wait, who are we - Lemmy?
Er, no us Idiot Americans that supposedly elected a demented rapist who explicitly said he would set himself up as a dictator.
I just realised it’s funnier when you lot do that if I read it as the “royal we”.
Yeah I’m not surprised about the Thiel/Epstein thing, I’m more surprised that the NHS is considering any sort of private health data handling by PALANTIR of all companies.
Somebody is going to be getting a Non-executive board membership or millionaire consulting “gig” from one of Tiel’s companies or one from one of his friends…
By this point in time in Britain that kind of I thing has been going on long enough to almost be tradition.
It’s universally true that having more and better information can improve business and efficiency. (This of course has limits, yes.)
I’m sure they were offering data that would help the agency.
Now the ethics, and creepiness? I’m not a commenting on that. Palantir is not ethical. They labor under twisted logic.
And every time we mention their name online, we probally get a demerit in their database.
fuck Palantir
fuck these bots that only just predict, regurgitate and are not intelligent
fuck peter dick eater (he is ashamed of his own desire) thiel
i bet he wanted that Epstein dick deeply
The liability is obviously not high enough if keeping and sharing this data works out positively. Even if the parties involved weren’t obviously evil, the risk to the people is too high for them to accept the risk with only trivial, speculative improvements.
And where we are going, they will have the ability to retaliate
Oh yeah they are in deep cahoots you should read the investigative journalism article they mention from earlier this summer.