Palantir is turning the NHS into a tool for mass surveillance

NHS England’s Federated Data Platform, run primarily by controversial US military contractor Palantir, would give a future UK government the ability to use patients’ healthcare data to unleash unprecedented mass surveillance, experts and technologists have warned openDemocracy.

“We have already seen in the US how Palantir’s reach into so many different areas of government has allowed it to build a system that provides detailed profiles of people to enable ICE raids,” said Duncan McCann of the Good Law Project, referring to how President Donald Trump’s mass deportation programme has used Palantir’s tools. “The exact same thing is being enabled by the integration of Palantir into the UK public sector.”

This risk is only exacerbated by the fact that nearly three years after Palantir was awarded the £330m contract to run the FDP, it remains unclear what patient data it gathers, on what basis and to what end. Despite this, 69% of regional NHS Trusts have already adopted the platform, which provides the health service with a new operating system intended to link up otherwise unconnected databases and disparate software across different NHS services and regions.

This lack of clarity was laid bare this week, when the UK’s cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology Committee urged the government to break the NHS’s contract with Palantir. Its report contained a stark recommendation to the government: reveal “the exact nature of Palantir’s access to identifiable and non-identifiable patient data, on what statutory basis this was authorised, when, and by whom.”

McCann and the Good Law Project are part of an unusually wide coalition demanding the UK cut ties with Palantir, but technologists who have worked closely on the FDP warn that the genie is now out of the bottle; kicking the US giant out of the NHS may not be enough to solve the data privacy problems its Federated Data Platform has created.

“You know you could pull Palantir out,” Tom Bartlett, an NHS technologist who worked on the FDP and has spoken publicly in favour of the project, told openDemocracy. “But the danger remains."

“You still might get a government that says, ‘We need to have the data from the NHS and the data from the Home Office connected, and we want to use it for the purpose of denying people healthcare or deporting people or whatever’.”

Coalition of Resistance

To understand how deeply Palantir is enmeshed in the UK’s public sector, consider the coalition opposed to it.

NHS data analysts and chief data and analytical officers have spoken out against the FDP. The British Medical Association, a union representing doctors and medical students, has urged GPs to reject it. The Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board, which oversees NHS services for 2.8 million people, has refused to sign up to the platform, claiming outstanding security risks haven’t been addressed, and that it has better technology in-house.

It’s not just the NHS, either. London’s mayor has blocked a £50m Palantir contract with the Metropolitan Police, arguing that it was improperly awarded. The housing ministry replaced a Palantir system to match British hosts with Ukrainian refugees with its own technology. In Coventry, local politicians and unions are protesting the renewal of a £750,000 Palantir contract with the council’s children’s services department. Financial Conduct Authority employees are seeking to orchestrate a cross-union campaign against a 12-week trial contract with Palantir that they fear could expose the UK’s sensitive financial data to US law enforcement authorities.

“Our pilot with Palantir allows the Met for the first time to bring together data it already lawfully holds in one place to identify potential standards, welfare or cultural concerns,” said a spokesperson for The Met over email. “It also allows us to identify early issues so we can act more fairly and consistently, ensuring officers receive support or face appropriate action before problems escalate.” In April, Met officers expressed outrage at the “intrusive” use of Palantir’s technology to assess them for misconduct.

The police can already request information from the NHS if it meets a policing need, such as a homicide investigation or tracing missing persons.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s contract with Palantir involves testing an AI search tool for its data. “The data used in the trial will be fully encrypted and under our control,” wrote a spokesperson for the regulator over email. “No-one is able to access the unencrypted data without our authorisation.”

Coventry City Council did not respond to questions about its Palantir contract.

What exactly does Palantir do?

Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, once described its role as “the finding of hidden things”.

He co-founded the company with $2 million from the venture capital arm of the CIA in the early 2000s, when the failure to prevent 9/11 was being debated across Washington and Silicon Valley. It was suspected, and would be confirmed by the pu…