Palantir is a US tech company that works with the IDF, British and American militaries, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) and, since 2020, the NHS.
The company first partnered with the Government and NHS England during the Covid-19 pandemic, under the emergency coronavirus legislation providing software to help manage resources like ICU beds and PPE. This temporary “Covid-19 Data Store” raised early concerns about patient privacy and data handling. The initial contract was for £1, a great investment for Palantir to get its foot in the door of the NHS and this was extended at a cost of £23 million.
In November 2023, Palantir was awarded a £330 million contract to run the NHS’s new Federated Data Platform (FDP), aimed at linking data across hospitals and care systems in England to improve planning and reduce waiting times. The platform is being rolled out nationally, meaning Palantir will have access to patient data all over the country.
PALANTIR are an abhorrent company specialising in military data and surveillance. They have been accused of complicity in human rights abuses across the globe, including involvement in drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine; racist predictive policing and forced deportations working with ICE in the US.
The recent Mandelson/Epstein affair has revealed a web of connections with Palantir. Keir Starmer visited Palantir’s US headquarters during an official visit to the White House facilitated by Mandelson who had until his recent appointment as ambassador was part of Global Counsel, a political lobbying group (which he founded) whose clients include Palantir where they assist in procuring contracts. Incidentally the ‘Prince of Darkness’ still has shares in Global Counsel. This affair will likely put the NHS contract under more scrutiny when it comes up for renewal in 2027.
The Government are ‘mandating’ NHS Trusts to use Palantir’s FDP across its services, using this app-based technology to track and report on patient data. Not only will this see their technologies in NHS hospitals, Palantir has also infiltrated other public services including police forces.
Palantir, and partners Oracle, are corporations who explicitly state they are working towards a world of unlimited surveillance via a model of unified data collection which can be “easily consumable by the AI model”. The Tony Blair Institute has been advising and advocating the UK government to follow this model to unify national data, including health data. The FDP is therefore explicitly linked to a global hegemonic enterprise to establish lucrative deals for major corporations to profit from the extraction of citizen data and use this to surveil people for the purposes of wealth creation rather than the advancement of a healthy society.
Nationally, those vocally opposing Palantir’s adoption in the NHS include the largest doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, the Doctors’ Association UK, the Good Law Project (who have raised several legal challenges to aspects of the contract), No Tech For Tyrants, Liberty, Keep Our NHS Public and the Green Party.
Locally, Palantir Out of Leicester, a collective of intersectional local campaigning groups, launched a petition on 28 November which gathered 500 signatures from Leicestershire residents within its first 48 hours. The petition calls for all healthcare services to join the national resistance against the roll out of the FDP.
Local campaigning group Save Our NHS Leicestershire (SONHS) said that:
“We are among many organisations which have been shocked by some of the activities of Palantir, from business practices to apparent lack of transparency and bias. We are not convinced that NHS data are safe in Palantir’s hands, and we think a strong ethical track record is needed if NHS data are to be shared.”
As it currently exists, the FDP sits beyond the scope of the original goal – from creating a way to federate and integrate data to the imposition of specific and unfamiliar software, provided by a private company, on local Trusts.
The FDP has subsequently been rolled out across England with varying levels of uptake amongst Trusts. Many have yet to implement any products provided in the FDP and just 16 Trusts are using all products. University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust is a named organisation that is live with the FDP and is a self-declared “incubation site” for further developments, with both Leicestershire Partnership Trust and the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB having signed up to adopt Palantir’s technology. Greater Manchester ICB have decided not to adopt Palantir’s software, on the grounds that they are 2-3 years away from competing with what Manchester already has in place, and to maintain community trust. They are not unique in finding that their local, bespoke software, designed with their communities in mind, is far superior and advanced compared to Palantir’s one size fits all products
Palantir specialises in AI-driven military and surveillance systems, and data analytics. They have been named in a report by a UN Rapporteur as a company who is “enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives” in Palestine, and Amnesty has urged all public bodies to cut ties with Palantir due to their facilitation of human rights abuses
Palantir’s many controversial projects include: enabling ICE’s mass abductions and detainment in camps, leading to widespread unrest and riots in America, and the death of ordinary US citizens; facilitating state surveillance and gross invasion of privacy by collecting and linking up data on health, biometric identification, private communications, social media behaviour, real-time location, vehicle, address and employment information and even tattoos; using said data to create predictive policing software, viewing every citizen as a threat and predicting how likely each individual is to commit a crime or even just show up at a protest, leading to extremely discriminatory policing and oversurveillance of minoritised communities; refusing to convert collected data into a more typical form when the NYPD wanted to end their contract with Palantir and move their data processing capabilities onto in-house software (known as vendor lock-in); and targeting drone attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been shown to have caused mass civilian casualties.
Besides human rights abuses there are also serious concerns regarding data security and ethics shared by patients and data analysts. This includes the use of pseudonymisation to protect data despite the Information Commissioner’s Office clearly stating that pseudonymised personal data is not secure and is still considered personal data; the lack of any opt out to have your personal data processed by Palantir; the potential for becoming dependent on and being locked into using Palantir’s software in the future, which could make it very difficult for the NHS to move away from (as they did with the NYPD). The potential for the data infrastructure Palantir is building across the many governmental departments it has contracts in (including the Home Office, Cabinet Office, GCHQ, all public bodies, the Ministry of Defence, local councils and central government) being used to surveil the British population, either by this or a future unknown and as yet unelected government, which would be very difficult to stop once the infrastructure and capability is in place.
With thanks to: Keep Our NHS Public, Palantir Out of Leicester and Health Workers For A Free Palestine.
saveournhsleicestershire.uk 
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