
Government finally publishes NHS contracts with Palantir, Faculty and big tech - wlscr
https://tech.newstatesman.com/coronavirus/nhs-contracts-palantir-faculty-microsoft-google
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anonymousDan
As a UK taxpayer this makes me so angry. The fact this incredibly valuable
(not to mention privacy sensitive) data is given away through backroom deals
for a pittance without any transparency is just infuriating.

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throwawaypal
If things like this upset you, you are seriously naive about the operations of
your government. As a former Palantir employee, I can say with some confidence
that the govt and private company's make efforts to ensure these things remain
secret..

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Taek
Echoing another commenter, it's absolutely okay to be upset about things that
run-of-the mill.

If we didn't get upset about everyday human rights violations, we'd still have
slaves.

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hackissimo123
And if we didn't get upset about everyday human rights violations, China
wouldn't currently be herding people into concentration camps. Wait...

~~~
mtnGoat
touche!

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hyko
And that's why we don't trust "the good guys" with our data. There are no good
guys, keep your damn data to yourself no matter what.

~~~
creato
While I understand the thinking here, it's a bit sad. It seems quite likely
that very useful medical advancements could be made by looking for
correlations in large databases of a variety of medical data. Or correlations
between health histories and genetic data. If we gained understanding that led
to improved healthcare for everyone, wouldn't someone doing this kind of work
be a "good guy"?

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disabled
There have been reports on this site, of severe healthcare provider (as in
HIPAA protected data) privacy violations, that occurred via data broker
intermediaries through popular social media platforms. You know, getting a $60
FedEx package consisting of baby formula, during the month that the baby you
miscarried should have been born, that almost cost you your life too.

The amount of bad medical data, erroneous medical data, and just medical
errors in the US is actually unbelievably astonishing.

Finding correlations in datasets (even the most perfect dataset!) for use in
healthcare is a profoundly unethical social experiment, both among the
population and the individual.

We all know that the field of software engineering has faced scandal after
scandal when it comes to ethics. The list of examples is practically endless
now, and this is one of the most dangerous examples by far.

I mean, it really should be apparent.

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gruez
Companies fedex $60 worth of goods to expectant mothers? Is that a thing?

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disabled
There are actually multiple people on here, who had wives who miscarried, who
got a $60 promotional FedEx package of Enfamil (baby formula) on what was the
exact expected date of their miscarried baby.

So, it was not like it was hard to figure out that it was from medical data,
and especially in one case, where they did not even know that they were
pregnant when the miscarriage happened!

You can find this stuff easily by using variants of code words from the post I
made, to find the details that you want to learn about.

However, this is the user who did incredible investigation work. (There are
far more thoughtful posts over this incident if you just search for things
like "USER" AND "Baby/Infant Formula":
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22pbm%22%20AND%20%22spooky23%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment)

You will find extremely insightful information if you further modify select
key words in the search. It really is eye opening.

Also, the Financial Times always had pretty impressive investigative work on
data privacy, and not in an apocalyptic or fleeting sense. It is just
incredibly well researched, and somehow, I have never been disappointed by
their coverage.

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zymhan
This should probably be updated to say "UK Govt" for clarity, not everyone
will immediately know what the National Health Service is.

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Semaphor
I actually think that should become a general rule. Way too many US-related
titles about things far less well known than the NHS.

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heavenlyblue
NHS in general is way less known than UK citizens think. Especially in Europe
where the existence of a national healthcare system is not a religion but a
norm.

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vinay427
> Especially in Europe where the existence of a national healthcare system is
> not a religion but a norm.

An NHS-type system is not at all the norm in Europe. Comprehensive and
universal health insurance or even single-payer health insurance are not the
same as the single-payer (mostly) single-provider system in the UK.

In most of the Germanic countries, for instance, the norm is closer to the
multiple-payer multiple-provider system in the US in structure, albeit most
certainly not in outcomes due to some important tweaks.

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DanBC
> single-provider system in the UK

England doesn't have a single provider system.

I don't know about Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland (they each have health
systems that are devolved and thus separate).

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vinay427
I did specify "(mostly)" which I think is rather accurate. It's rather close
to a completely single-provider model (in each of the constituent devolved
regions, as you note) compared to the system in Canada, for instance.

> With largely public or government owned providers, this also fits into the
> 'Beveridge Model' of health care systems, sometimes considered to be single-
> payer, with relatively little private involvement compared to other
> universal systems.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-
payer_healthcare#United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-
payer_healthcare#United_Kingdom)

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McDev
I'm confused about what data is being provided to these companies. Is it the
patient data that my GP has for example, or is it purely data that the NHS aim
to gather from the contact tracing app?

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kthxbye123
This has of course been Dominic Cummings’s plan for years - you can read about
it quite openly on his blog, and on the blog of his friend American
physicist/eugenicist Steve Hsu. The point is to allow private industry to
capture the health information of private citizens in order to turn Britain
into a genetic modification powerhouse- pitched on the basis of fighting
genetic diseases, but in fact founded on the anti-egalitarian, genetic-
determinist, race-and-iq worldview of much of the modern right

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andy_ppp
Can you provide some references to the more egregious articles?

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xenospn
After reading the article, I think it's quite clear that both Palantir and
Google paid someone off to get this contract.

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drocer88
"campaign" donations. Perfectly legal

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sweeneyrod
Doubtful. There's far less money in politics in the UK than in the US. The
total donations the Labour party received in the 2019 general election would
barely be enough to elect a single senator.

