- Open Democracy: We need urgent answers about the massive NHS COVID data deal Archived Message
Posted by Sinister Burt
on May 19, 2020, 9:00 am
|
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/we-need-urgent-answers-about-massive-nhs-covid-data-deal/ "This week openDemocracy and Foxglove, a tech justice start-up, sent a legal letter demanding the UK government urgently publishes details of its controversial patient data deals with big tech companies – struck at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. If we don’t get this information, we will consider suing for publication. Outside of the horrific death toll, perhaps the most far-reaching global consequence of the pandemic is the rapid expansion of surveillance in our daily lives. In the name of beating back the pandemic, governments around the world are giving tech giants extensive access to valuable stores of health data. Britain is no different. On 28 March, a blog quietly appeared on the website of the cherished National Health Service. It announced what might be the largest handover of NHS patient data to private corporations in history. US tech giants Amazon, Microsoft, and Google – plus two controversial AI films called Faculty and Palantir – are apparently assisting the NHS in tracking hospital resources and in providing a “single source of truth” about the epidemic, in order to stem its spread. Whitehall sources have described the amounts of health data funnelled into the new datastore as “unprecedented.” Yet the government has released virtually no detail about the deals. Why? We do know some things. Palantir, founded by Silicon Valley billionaire and close Trump ally Peter Thiel, is a data-mining firm best known for supporting the CIA’s counterinsurgency and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2019 it was criticised for its support for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s brutal regime of deportations. Similar COVID-data contracts Palantir has won in the US are worth millions of dollars; however the film is reportedly running the new NHS contract for £1. Why?" Ctd. |
| Message Thread:
|