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

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

#71

Post by ozborn »

ran3824692 wrote: post #64
Barrin92 wrote: post #47

Honestly borders to me on being de-facto undemocratic because I doubt a lot of British citizens are aware of this or that there has been any sort of meaningful consent given by patients to outsource their data to a foreign intelligence firm. When it comes to how to solve this I really think we need to fundamentally rethink data ownership both on a legal as well at a technical level. I was recently reading up on Tim B…

> in a way that puts formal limits on what they can do with it and how long they have access to it, and I as the patient have both the right and technical ability to revoke that access If that's what SOLID is, its a scam and more of his DRM promotion. There is no technical way to "revoke my access." Unless you have a memory erasing implant in my brain, if the data gets onto my screen, I can copy it and access it fore…

Data use agreements often specify under what terms the data is held and destroyed. While people may still remember some data, the usual use case is large databases that can't be memorized. If someone revokes that data, that data would need to be removed from the database and all associated downstream copies. Failure to comply would open the door to legal penalties, which is the real stick.

Imagine for example, if the US or UK governments took corporate misuse of personal health data (https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760935/google-medical-d...) as seriously as they currently takes video copyright violations by individuals....

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

nojito wrote: post #15
mschuster91 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how usable and helpful the software is for the front line workers, the fact remains that Palantir has extensive access to the medical and according to the article also criminal history of everyone in the UK. Who can promise that there are no side channels to the USA or no covert exfiltration using "backups" or "integration systems"?

Why would palantir risk their EU business by breaking the trust of the contract and move information to the US?

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by lostlogin »

marcinzm wrote: post #59
lostlogin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little pedantic - England is not the UK and that budget quoted above was for England. The budget for all countries is larger, and England spends a bit less per citizen than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. https://fullfact.org/health/what-is-the-nhs-budget/

Fair point although England is by far the majority of the population so per capita spend only goes up 20%. Still not a very high number and near the bottom for G7 nations.

Yes, it’s a big difference. I also noticed that the per capita spend is a fair bit higher in the UK when you exclude England, Northern Ireland in particular. This could be skewed to look more significant than it really is, because the economies of scale could be helping England.

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

#75

Post by baylisscg »

dekhn wrote: post #43
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the NHS is about to be sold off as part of Brexit, and they can profit hugely from a slice of that action, while pretending they followed the rules until Brexit was completed.

I haven't seen any plans to privatize NHS as part of Brexit (and it's not clear why the two would be related, anyway).

The removal of EU legislation from British law and the UK-US trade deal. With the US demanding it's healthcare and pharma unfettered access to the NHS on terms equivalent to current US not UK standards. The UK is not, technically, slapping a FOR SALE sign on the NHS they've just put themselves in a position where pretty much anyone and everyone can demand a slice. Of course this assumes that the current gonverment doesn't view the NHS as an asset to be strip mined which I'm damn sure they do.

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

#76

Post by PeterStuer »

seesawtron wrote: post #29
cool_dude85 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the NHS wasn't selling the data to Palantir, just giving it away?

The £1 deal is is not relevenat because I am sure people will be annoyed despite it being a free deal or one that costs thousands of pounds. The only thing that matters is whether the data privacy was ensured.

The token amount is just there in the contract to notarize on paper the NHS as the 'client' in the contract, because you anticipate this will be questioned as a dodgy deal.

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

#77

Post by DanBC »

baylisscg wrote: post #75
dekhn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any plans to privatize NHS as part of Brexit (and it's not clear why the two would be related, anyway).

The removal of EU legislation from British law and the UK-US trade deal. With the US demanding it's healthcare and pharma unfettered access to the NHS on terms equivalent to current US not UK standards. The UK is not, technically, slapping a FOR SALE sign on the NHS they've just put themselves in a position where pretty much anyone and everyone can demand a slice. Of course this assumes that the current gonverment do…

> With the US demanding it's healthcare and pharma unfettered access to the NHS on terms equivalent to current US not UK standards.

They already have that. Read the Lansley reforms. They mostly don't take it up because they can't afford to run healthcare for the pittance paid by UK government, but there are large bits of the NHS run by non-NHS providers. See for example Priory Group or Cygnet Health Care.

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

#78

Post by krageon »

nojito wrote: post #15
mschuster91 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how usable and helpful the software is for the front line workers, the fact remains that Palantir has extensive access to the medical and according to the article also criminal history of everyone in the UK. Who can promise that there are no side channels to the USA or no covert exfiltration using "backups" or "integration systems"?

Why would palantir risk their EU business by breaking the trust of the contract and move information to the US?

This is plainly a bad-faith question, because it assumes ethics and lasting consequences for bad behaviour. Two things we have seen absolutely no proof of in real life recently (or ever really, when it comes to corporations), rather the opposite is true.

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

#79

Post by secfirstmd »

kjaftaedi wrote: post #52
physicsguy wrote: post #6

In English Law (and in many other jurisdictions) it's only a legal contract if "consideration" is given by both parties; i.e. Palantir here must charge something in return for it to be an enforceable contract.

The UK is still under EU law, as they haven't fully exited yet. The citizens would still have to agree to allowing their personal data to be processed by third-parties and consent for their data to be processed outside the EU. Is there any evidence that this consent was given?

The UK government may try to wiggle out of it by using the GDPR exemptions related to research and/or national security https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/

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

#80

Post by easytiger »

baylisscg wrote: post #75
dekhn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any plans to privatize NHS as part of Brexit (and it's not clear why the two would be related, anyway).

The removal of EU legislation from British law and the UK-US trade deal. With the US demanding it's healthcare and pharma unfettered access to the NHS on terms equivalent to current US not UK standards. The UK is not, technically, slapping a FOR SALE sign on the NHS they've just put themselves in a position where pretty much anyone and everyone can demand a slice. Of course this assumes that the current gonverment do…

> which I'm damn sure they do.

They specifically do not. You consuming twitter bubble fake news doesn't make something true

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