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Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

cnbc.com

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Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#31

Post by nickff »

monadic2 wrote: post #25
nickff wrote: post #16

The article text seems to indicate that Palantir was offering data analysis software/services to the British government for a nominal fee. It doesn't seem like NHS was selling the data, they just needed some services, and paying £1 was required to bind Palantir in a contract. This title really seems like click-bait.

The title is literally correct, I don’t see any clickbait.

Well it's technically correct, but the government wasn't giving access to Palantir as a favor, they were purchasing data analysis SaaS.

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#32

Post by cool_dude85 »

nickff wrote: post #31
monadic2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is literally correct, I don’t see any clickbait.

Well it's technically correct, but the government wasn't giving access to Palantir as a favor, they were purchasing data analysis SaaS.

Sorry, they purchased it for £1? Now who's being "technically correct"?

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#33

Post by nickff »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #32
nickff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's technically correct, but the government wasn't giving access to Palantir as a favor, they were purchasing data analysis SaaS.

Sorry, they purchased it for £1? Now who's being "technically correct"?

>" Sorry, they purchased it for £1? Now who's being "technically correct"? "

Palantir received one pound; the government paid Palantir for software. The title implies that the government was selling the data, but they were actually getting SaaS for a pittance.

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#34

Post by monadic2 »

nickff wrote: post #31
monadic2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is literally correct, I don’t see any clickbait.

Well it's technically correct, but the government wasn't giving access to Palantir as a favor, they were purchasing data analysis SaaS.

Honestly that distinction had never even occurred to me—I was envisioning possible concern over giving access to sensitive personal information to a for-profit multinational.

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#35

Post by 908087 »

code4tee wrote: post #30

The data for use in model training is worth far more to Palantir. They can spin it as being nice and helping with COVID-19 but in reality Palantir couldn’t buy this data even if they wanted to... so they got the U.K. government to give it to them! Clever.

They used the Google playbook here. NHS seems happy to hand patient data over to US surveillance corporations without patient consent.

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#36

Post by hogFeast »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #9

Funny how no one wants to talk about the reason that the NHS is doing these deals. Of all the competent devs / data analyst in the UK, how many do you think actually want to work at the NHS? So lots of demand / need (healthcare is a mess in part because of data management via paper) and no supply / interest of talent.

It is a bit more complex than this.

The salaries aren't definitely not great compared with London...but they aren't terrible outside. I think the issue is that being a "dev" in the NHS is nothing like being an actual dev anywhere else. It is mostly about learning proprietary software, not development. So there are no real transferable skills (and ofc, NHS Trusts is always do "internal hires").

I have seen this in other businesses. They have huge IT departments but it is mostly about maintaining proprietary software (like SharePoint or whatever). The business then changed to a tech business and they have hundreds of IT people who have no useful skills (and the issue is management, in the NHS you have managers who are from the last century...no wonder Palantir rolled them).

(Somewhat ironically, one of these businesses actually employs a few top CS grads but they all work in the non-IT side of business...the issue is management in the UK not understanding what IT is for at a fundamental level).

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#37

Post by hogFeast »

Traster wrote: post #12
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #9

Funny how no one wants to talk about the reason that the NHS is doing these deals. Of all the competent devs / data analyst in the UK, how many do you think actually want to work at the NHS? So lots of demand / need (healthcare is a mess in part because of data management via paper) and no supply / interest of talent.

Of all the competent devs / data analysts in the UK, how many do you think actually want to work for GCHQ? I would have thought not very many, and yet plenty fo them do.

Can you suggest another job where you look through other people's emails? To paraphrase a great man, you underestimate how voyeuristic other people are.

Re: Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive COVID-19 patient records in £1 deal

#39

Post by fyfy18 »

desas wrote: post #23
djaychela wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is still in force until the end of the transition period (I think Dec 31). What will change after then, who knows? I don't think I've seen anything coherent on any front from the government at this point.

The Data Protection Act 2018 essentially copies the gdpr into UK law, tweaks the corners where allowed under gdpr and adds afew other things.

This is the case for many EU laws - depending on the area [0], laws agreed upon in Brussels don't actually mean anything on their own, but member countries are required to write them into their own law. After Brexit happens such laws will still apply, as they have been written into UK law.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-commission/what-eur...

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