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.
They're embedded in much of the West's systems. It's full mask off and I don't want to hear another word about sUrVeIlLaNcE sTaTeS, gReAt FiReWalL, aUtHoRiTaRiAnIsM until we root it out and politicians, BoD, C-suite are effectively segregated from society in genpop forever, and our money seized and redistributed back to the working class. Or, you know...
Well I don't here much about Monsanto any more. So, like maybe its possible? But I'm rereading some Ghost in the Shell and betting more on that type of future
You don't hear about Monsanto anymore only because they were bought out by Bayer in 2018. You can be sure they're up to the same garbage under new management.
What they have on them is money. Palantir, specifically Peter Thiel, are among those leading this charge, and since their cause is wildly unpopular, they're hiring their army instead of them enlisting on their own.
All these people that talk nonsense on TV and YouTube, and have no evident logical consistency while advancing authoritarian thought are paid spokesmen. Notice how washed up celebrities in need of more cash often take a right-wing "heel turn" to get in on grifting the uneducated and uninformed, and the only people talking like them for free are members of the working class that have been fooled. You know they've been fooled, rather than genuinely holding those beliefs, because they can never, ever support their reasoning, and nearly always become increasingly agitated when engaged in debate when trying to defend those points only to realize they're completely unarmed.
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.
When Obama first started talking about this, I worked in healthcare with extremely sensitive data. I said it was a bad idea then, everyone laughed at me.
People think HIPAA is sancrosanct, but I'm willing to bet hospital IT departments aren't thoroughly vetting their third-party contractors as much as one would hope.
On the contrary, it would take a lot to stretch my credulity with how little people understand security and how much they love convenience.
You're probably right about fax. Telecom infrastructure in the US is notoriously insecure, as demonstrated by Salt Typhoon, and the only reason there has been little regulatory pressure to secure it is that the NSA et al love how easy it is to spy on us.
I almost wonder whether these regulations exist not to protect data, but to lull the public into a sense of complacency. Perhaps that's a tad conspiratorial, but so many laws exist to make legislators look good rather than serve their purported raison d'etre - just look at that OS-based age verification nonsense. At the very least, the national security state has a use for such things, regardless.
Fwiw, I got my first physical tinfoil hat from a friend warning about the debt crisis the USA was creating a year or so before "too big to fail." I got a few e-tinfoil hats in the preceding decades.
Conspiracy hypotheses aren't necessarily bad, although plenty certainly are. It's just another term to silence dissidents.
Oh, for sure, but I do like to qualify my statements when I'm speculating without evidence. It is wild, though, once the you start seeing how much reality doesn't align with the endorsed narrative.
Protip. 90% of the time if you disable JS completely in your browser, that prevents the cookie dialogs. Sometimes prevents other annoyware too.
My fav are the ones where you can click "Accept all", or "More Options..." and the Options path goes to like 50 pages of confusingly worded separate options that'd take 20 min to figure out them all. Asshole design.
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 ind
... Show more...
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.”
The fact that criticism of this is coming from the LDP, suggests that maybe the best replacement for Keir Starmer probably needs to come from outside the Labor party.
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.
Anonymizing personal info is way harder than most ppl realize. Bordering on impossible when there is other data about those people to use. That Harvard page mentions voter records. But I think more to the massive trove of behavior data that devices capture about everybody now. That paints a very intimate picture of everything most ppl do. Everywhere they go. All their interests. Their moods. Their habits. Their friends group. That is the basis of powerful de-anonymizing techniques. And data broker companies are VERY good at this. They hire incredibly smart data scientists.
I sincerely doubt anyone's medical data today can remain private. Might be data breaches. Might be de-anonymization. But it will not stay confidental between pt and dr for long.
This one specifically had people's addresses, so it was reasonably simple to match to people's identities if you had other data containing identity and address.
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.
Nah fuck that. I'm not giving up. We're down, bruised and battered, but we're not out. We've been through dark times before. This is my fucking home. Gonna be a cold day in hell before I stop fighting for it.
But yeah... I also wish the best for our friends in the UK, EU, and elsewhere, who are up against similar shit. We must all fight the good fight. And help each other as we do.
Pissed
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •100 years of humiliation for the UK.
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FauxLiving
in reply to Pissed • • •ghost_laptop
in reply to FauxLiving • • •Pissed
in reply to FauxLiving • • •FauxLiving
in reply to Pissed • • •deforestgump [he/him, comrade/them]
in reply to Pissed • • •TheVoiceOfRaison
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •like this
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Maeve
in reply to TheVoiceOfRaison • • •humble_boatsman
in reply to TheVoiceOfRaison • • •TiredTiger
in reply to humble_boatsman • • •like this
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humble_boatsman
in reply to TiredTiger • • •☂️-
in reply to TheVoiceOfRaison • • •Kefla [she/her, they/them]
in reply to ☂️- • • •badgermurphy
in reply to TheVoiceOfRaison • • •What they have on them is money. Palantir, specifically Peter Thiel, are among those leading this charge, and since their cause is wildly unpopular, they're hiring their army instead of them enlisting on their own.
All these people that talk nonsense on TV and YouTube, and have no evident logical consistency while advancing authoritarian thought are paid spokesmen. Notice how washed up celebrities in need of more cash often take a right-wing "heel turn" to get in on grifting the uneducated and uninformed, and the only people talking like them for free are members of the working class that have been fooled. You know they've been fooled, rather than genuinely holding those beliefs, because they can never, ever support their reasoning, and nearly always become increasingly agitated when engaged in debate when trying to defend those points only to realize they're completely unarmed.
Malyca
in reply to TheVoiceOfRaison • • •Eager Eagle
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •like this
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FineCoatMummy
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •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.
like this
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Maeve
in reply to FineCoatMummy • • •TiredTiger
in reply to Maeve • • •like this
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Maeve
in reply to TiredTiger • • •You wouldn't believe things I have seen in various industries that are supposedly "fiercely protected by federal regulation."
onetimefax.com/blog/how-secure…
As an example, I doubt traditional fax to be secure...at all, and you really wouldn't believe stuff I've seen texted and hot/y/gmailed.
Are Faxes Secure in 2026? Online Fax vs Email vs Fax Machines
Onetime FaxTiredTiger
in reply to Maeve • • •On the contrary, it would take a lot to stretch my credulity with how little people understand security and how much they love convenience.
You're probably right about fax. Telecom infrastructure in the US is notoriously insecure, as demonstrated by Salt Typhoon, and the only reason there has been little regulatory pressure to secure it is that the NSA et al love how easy it is to spy on us.
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Maeve
in reply to TiredTiger • • •TiredTiger
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Maeve
in reply to TiredTiger • • •Fwiw, I got my first physical tinfoil hat from a friend warning about the debt crisis the USA was creating a year or so before "too big to fail." I got a few e-tinfoil hats in the preceding decades.
Conspiracy hypotheses aren't necessarily bad, although plenty certainly are. It's just another term to silence dissidents.
TiredTiger
in reply to Maeve • • •Maeve likes this.
Maeve
in reply to TiredTiger • • •You got that right!
stickyprimer
in reply to FineCoatMummy • • •FineCoatMummy
in reply to stickyprimer • • •Protip. 90% of the time if you disable JS completely in your browser, that prevents the cookie dialogs. Sometimes prevents other annoyware too.
My fav are the ones where you can click "Accept all", or "More Options..." and the Options path goes to like 50 pages of confusingly worded separate options that'd take 20 min to figure out them all. Asshole design.
Deep
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •FoundFootFootage78
in reply to Deep • • •JoeKrogan
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •FauxLiving
in reply to JoeKrogan • • •LiamBox
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to LiamBox • • •limonfiesta
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •Starmer might actually be worse than Boris.
Holy fucking shit.
Once they have the data, there's no turning back.
SocialistVibes01
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •Aceticon
in reply to SocialistVibes01 • • •GnuLinuxDude
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •huf [he/him]
in reply to GnuLinuxDude • • •Lonk
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •StartCodon
in reply to Lonk • • •Malyca
in reply to StartCodon • • •Lonk
in reply to StartCodon • • •Aceticon
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •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.
FineCoatMummy
in reply to Aceticon • • •More info about that idea from Harvard University.
Anonymizing personal info is way harder than most ppl realize. Bordering on impossible when there is other data about those people to use. That Harvard page mentions voter records. But I think more to the massive trove of behavior data that devices capture about everybody now. That paints a very intimate picture of everything most ppl do. Everywhere they go. All their interests. Their moods. Their habits. Their friends group. That is the basis of powerful de-anonymizing techniques. And data broker companies are VERY good at this. They hire incredibly smart data scientists.
I sincerely doubt anyone's medical data today can remain private. Might be data breaches. Might be de-anonymization. But it will not stay confidental between pt and dr for long.
Aceticon
in reply to FineCoatMummy • • •FineCoatMummy
in reply to Aceticon • • •possumparty
in reply to FineCoatMummy • • •Malyca
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •FineCoatMummy
in reply to Malyca • • •Nah fuck that. I'm not giving up. We're down, bruised and battered, but we're not out. We've been through dark times before. This is my fucking home. Gonna be a cold day in hell before I stop fighting for it.
But yeah... I also wish the best for our friends in the UK, EU, and elsewhere, who are up against similar shit. We must all fight the good fight. And help each other as we do.
Vegafjord oakframer
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •