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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

#21

Post by marcinzm »

google234123 wrote: post #14
marcinzm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people talk about it but from a different context. The NHS is being de-funded by the same politicians whose friends benefit from these deals. Hard to hire competent people when your budget keeps getting cut.

£136.7 billion seems like a lot. It also seems like it's been exponentially going up since 1950.

That comes out to $2k/year/UK resident which is amazingly low I'd say. Staff are also limited to 1% salary increase per year since 2010 which is below inflation.

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

#22

Post by UweSchmidt »

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?

It seems that data-related crimes and oversights ("oops we've been hacked") are generally not being punished adequately. It's just data, right? No one got hurt. I have never heard of CEOs going to jail over any of the data breaches and abuses that are reported all the time. So I'd say the risk they'd face by "breaking trust" is fairly minimal.

And, actually tracing back how a machine learning algorithm might have gobbled up this data, to be used in 5 years in a way that no one can predict, is not easy either.

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

#23

Post by desas »

djaychela wrote: post #7
L_226 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually good question, I would like to know how these requests are handled post Brexit. Do A.13 GDPR requests still have to be honoured by the UK up to the Brexit date forever?

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.

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

#24

Post by marcinzm »

drocer88 wrote: post #18
marcinzm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people talk about it but from a different context. The NHS is being de-funded by the same politicians whose friends benefit from these deals. Hard to hire competent people when your budget keeps getting cut.

https://fullfact.org/health/spending-english-nhs/ Total health spending in England was around £129 billion in 2018/19 and is expected to rise to nearly £134 billion by 2019/20, taking inflation into account.

That comes out to $2k/year/UK resident which is amazingly low I'd say. Staff are also limited to 1% salary increase per year since 2010 which is below inflation.

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

#25

Post by monadic2 »

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.

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

#26

Post by cool_dude85 »

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.

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

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by seesawtron »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #26
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.

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.

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

#30

Post by code4tee »

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.
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