NHS to grant Palantir contractors ‘unlimited access’ to patient data

Dear lord, will this company just fuck off and die already? What do they have on everyone that they can secure these deals? Palantir is already embedded into the UK’s police systems. Scary stuff.

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Starmer might actually be worse than Boris.

Holy fucking shit.

Once they have the data, there’s no turning back.

Paywalled, but I’ll assume the NHS here is the National Health Service in the UK.

“Just don’t get sick bro!”

The prob ofc is, everybody will need healthcare in their life. We are at our most vulnerable when we need it the most.

Here in the US we have had endless breaches of healthcare data. Companies that promise to keep it secure. Ofc they can’t. Even the ones who make a good faith effort. They can’t either! So we get mass breaches, millions of patients. On a monthly basis. Or even more often. Of intimate data. Medications. Dr notes about the patient. Diseases you have.

In my parents day, health info was a piece of paper in a filing cabinet. Nobody could access it from across the planet! Even the gov could not, unless they sent somebody there with a search warrant. Today? It’s open fucking season.

Boils my blood.

About a decade ago, when I still lived in Britain, the project to keep central copies of GP patient data came and it was possible to Opt-Out.

I expresselly filled the paperwork to opt out of it with my GP, because by then I did not at all trust British Governments (all this was after the Snowden Revelations, plus having been in Finance in the 2008 crash and seen how that was dealt with by both British major parties, I fully believed they were corrupt as fuck) and expected that all that healtcare data would be misused including, sooner or later, being sold out (or even given) to the Private sector.

Here we are now, and lo and behold…

PS: By the way, if I remember it correctly this data was already sold to Google years ago, supposedly “anonimized” but in such a weak and inefective way it was proven it could easilly be de-anonimized.

Kid Starver is on a speedrun to destroy Labour. What a shitbag.

NHS England has granted external staff from companies including Palantir “unlimited access” to identifiable patient data while working on a part of its flagship data platform.

The change, first outlined in an internal briefing note seen by the FT, relates to the National Data Integration Tenant, described as a “safe haven for data” before it is “pseudonymised” and transferred to other systems.

The NDIT is an area within the Federated Data Platform, a tool that connects disparate NHS data into a single system, which Palantir won a £330mn contract in 2023 to build.

Under the plan, NHS England has agreed to create an “admin” role, which the briefing acknowledges “permits unlimited access to non-NHSE staff” to the NDIT and the identifiable patient information held within it.

As well as Palantir employees, this could include staff from consultancy firms who have been drafted in to work on the FDP.

The change marks a significant departure from the current practice, which requires any individual working with the NDIT to apply for clear data access for specific data sets.

The briefing document, written by a senior NHS data official in April, acknowledges that granting enhanced permissions could mean there is a “risk of loss of public confidence” when it comes to “safeguarding patient data and ensuring appropriate use and access to it”.

While all-round access was originally intended only for NHS England employees with security clearance, the briefing noted that external workers had requested the same permissions “as it is too inconvenient to apply for all of the necessary individual CDAs”.

It added:

“This is not only about Palantir, hence we have referred to non-NHSE staff, but there is currently considerable public interest and concern about how much access to patient data Palantir/Palantir staff have.”

The note recommends that a cap be placed on the number of external admins with access to the NDIT, which should also be time-limited and regularly reviewed.

Officials confirmed that the recommendation in the briefing note had been accepted in recent weeks but said it would apply to only a small number of non-NHS staff.

Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Commons technology committee, said:

“This somewhat cavalier attitude to data security demonstrated how this whole [FDP] project does not have security by design at its heart. The public will be rightfully concerned that data privacy is not the first concern.”

NHS England has committed to five “data promises”, which include transparency about who can access data and what they can see.

Referencing the pledge, the briefing warned that “being sure exactly who is accessing what patient-identifiable data at any one time” is a top concern.

“The more people have unrestricted access, the less that aim can be met,” it added.

An NHS England spokesperson said:

“The NHS has strict policies in place for managing access to patient data and carries out regular audits to ensure compliance — including monitoring the work of engineers helping to set up the central data collection platform that will track NHS performance and help improve care for patients.

Anyone external requiring access must have government security clearance and be approved by a member of NHS England staff at director level or above.”

Palantir’s involvement in creating the FDP has increasingly become controversial because of its work in the US defence sector and immigration enforcement.

Its co-founder and chief executive, Alex Karp, has been an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, and some NHS staff have refused to work on the FDP due to ethical concerns about the company.

Supporters of the FDP have praised its ability to bring together operational data, such as waiting lists and operating theatre schedules, and improve patient outcomes.

A Palantir spokesperson said:

“To the NHS, and all our customers, we are designated by law as a ‘data processor’, with our customers “data controllers”.

That means that Palantir software can only be used to process data precisely in line with the instruction of the customer. Using the data for anything else would not only be illegal but technically impossible due to granular access controls overseen by the NHS.”

Speaking of populace needing to be in the streets, my friends across the pond, don’t let this happen. It’s too late for us Americans, it’s not too late for you. Get in the street and demand better.

If you get sick they will send a drone to take care of you.

raid against humanity

The UK is just getting worse by the day, Starmer and Labour need to go

EU+UK political leadership is a complete shitshow.

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