Say No to Palantir in the NHS(notopalantir.goodlawproject.org)
216 points by _____k 11 hours ago | 11 comments
seydor 1 hour ago
My main question generally is, why is palantir doing the work that research institutions should be doing for governments.

Make the data public if you want to see progress

harvey9 30 minutes ago
FDP is using patient-level health data so not something likely to be made public, and the goal is to manage this specific health system so not really a research endeavour. This would still be the case even if the UK had picked another supplier or built it's own platform.

Separately, there are some Trusted Research Environments out there for approved research projects.

anonzzzies 7 hours ago
Everyone should say no to palantir anywhere, especially outside the US.
discordance 5 hours ago
Palantir is inside Coles supermarkets in Australia. I've stopped going to Coles because of that.

https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Palantir-Pa...

DFHippie 7 hours ago
I assume "planting" is a typo'ed "palantir", in which case I agree completely. And it's true inside the US as much as outside.
anonzzzies 6 hours ago
Thanks, fixed.
rvz 6 hours ago
You should also include Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, IBM, Anthropic, and any tech company that has a defence contract with the US Department of Defence / War and ICE or any government.

Yet the big problem is of course for those being “principled” about this subject are not serious themselves as some either work there and profit from it, continue to use their products including LLMs or will concede to using them due to social inertia.

The only time this is taken seriously is when all these contracts are scrapped. (They won’t be.)

biophysboy 5 hours ago
I think the difference is that Palantir is significantly more focused on federal contracts, particularly those related to defense/surveillance.
heavyset_go 3 hours ago
Large tech companies are defense contractors now.
AndrewKemendo 2 hours ago
Is there a time they weren’t?

Google got their first DoD contract in 2003 from DARPA.

nurettin 2 hours ago
WDYM "now"? Companies that get large enough get contracts. Even apple sold power macs iphones and ipads to us mil.
koakuma-chan 1 hour ago
I'm throwing out my iPhone and moving to Tibet.
XorNot 1 hour ago
Companies that submit bids for contracts get contracts. You would be surprised at the diversity of size and scale of companies which service defense contracts in particular - very small companies can end up in big supply chains because they're the ones who turn up to make the part.
moogly 2 hours ago
Don't let the best be the enemy of the good.
151212j0j 59 minutes ago
Of course that's the goal, but stopping new contract is 1 step toward the goal my friend, got to stop whining and take baby step.

You are saying stopping new coal mine means that everyone need to stop heating now and freeze to death this winter.

willtemperley 3 hours ago
Absolutely. We should not contract any of these companies and use British companies instead.
exBarrelSpoiler 6 hours ago
As cliche is it to cry whataboutism, this clearly is. Incrementalism is better than nothing. Sanctimony is FUD. If even one company is suffers at least it’ll serve as a warning to the others.
aprilthird2021 3 hours ago
When one domino falls, it will cause many to fall at once
koakuma-chan 4 hours ago
Why?
jschrf 3 hours ago
Surveillance Capitalism
next_xibalba 5 hours ago
Why?
mr_toad 5 hours ago
We don’t know who else is watching.
tbrownaw 6 hours ago
So what are they using this software for, what's the proposed alternative, and what makes that alternative work better for their use case?
karlitooo 2 hours ago
When foundry came out the demo looked next level. I'm sure you could do much of the same thing with FOSS but IMO the problem that the NHS has been struggling with for multiple decades really looks like a lack of Technical Leadership due to the complexity of the environment and care needed when dealing with patient data.

Hopefully Palantir has the necessary skillset to navigate the political environment which involves developing a platform that: 1. protects patient privacy 2. supports needs of providers (e.g. hospitals, gps, specialists, DoH) 3. allows providers to use data to support their operations 4. allows NHS to use the data to improve patient outcomes and efficiency

This Foundry demo impressed me at the time but its a bit dated now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms

Actual data analyst from a hospital talking about what the platform achieves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps47Azr2Jz0

questionableans 2 minutes ago
I’ve heard Foundry is not only insanely expensive, but to actually accomplish something comparable to the demos in your domain requires a huge amount of integration work to build it out in a way that locks you in.
Oarch 2 hours ago
That second video was fascinating, thanks for posting.
ziftface 5 hours ago
It's totally reasonable to be skeptical of palantir without knowing the exact product in question, given their record.
monero-xmr 4 hours ago
I mean it’s totally reasonable to be skeptical of the NHS given their record
tombert 2 hours ago
You can be skeptical of both but Palantir and Peter Thiel especially are categorically horrible, and have shown to solely value increasing their net worth more than all else.

Yeah yeah capitalism optimize for shareholders, but there are plenty of successful large companies that haven't built an entire brand out of directly enabling large entities to erode any semblance of freedom we have left.

bnjms 46 minutes ago
Every time I’ve heard Peter Thiel speak I’ve believed he cares about other things. I’m more concerned about his implementations of things.
tombert 22 minutes ago
Sociopaths are often very convincing. Every action I’ve read about seems to end up enriching himself.
adolph 5 hours ago
Healthcare systems often use Foundry for organizing data. It's a complex problem and Foundry has a good toolset for the job.

https://www.palantir.com/offerings/health/

biophysboy 5 hours ago
As somebody that works in the biotech/health space, this page is not that exciting?

The bottleneck in drug development is not discovery; we have to test more hypotheses more efficiently, not generate more hypotheses. You don't need a product like foundry to have reproducibility or share pipeline templates; there are already free, scripting-language-agnostic workflow tools.

ggm 2 hours ago
Healthcare use of foundry != biotech/bioinformatics use of foundry?

A former work colleague works in health ontologies. They are complicated and include EMT and ward staff using terms of art with inverse meaning.

Perhaps I misread your intent, belittling complexity in somebody else's information space (eg a function of multiple parallel legacy systems and organisational change) seems unhelpful. You weren't excited, maybe people on the management and health economics side were?

megawatts 5 hours ago
They were already contracted by NHS to monitor vaccine distribution and covid data in 2020, that contract was terminated and moved to Mozaic Services after public outcry over data privacy concerns. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/uk-ends-one-of-its-data-shar...
harvey9 21 minutes ago
Did you read the article? Adult social care dashboard not vaccine data. Mozaic just handled migration and is not the host.

NHs FDP (Foundry) still has the vaccine data last time I checked.

dikozaken 1 hour ago
Funded by "health workers for a free palestine" should say everything you need to not sign any shit these ppl are giving you.
uxcolumbo 58 minutes ago
Can you provide more details?
chopete3 36 minutes ago
This is could be the reason the commenter is trying to convey.

Palantir helps Israel with war in Gaza/Palestine.

Friend of any enemy is an enemy. That group is asking for help cause harm to that Friend.

questionableans 4 minutes ago
This got me thinking. In any country or ethnic group, it’s so important to differentiate between the average person trying to get by and the aggressors who claim to be their leaders. When we look at the world through the lens of political and military leaders, we miss so much of the humanity of everyday people.
1 hour ago
lingrush4 5 hours ago
Clicking "no thanks" on their cookie banner does absolutely nothing. What a sleazy website.
MoltenMan 4 hours ago
Clicking anything on the banner does absolutely nothing Hanlon's Razor wins out here I think
notepad0x90 2 hours ago
I don't know if you all know this, but Palantir offers ai/analytics services that are not just for governments. That's how they started out, but don't be surprised seeing random companies using them same as they would elastic, splunk and the like.

I won't comment on Palantir themselves, I doubt I could add anything there, but I think there is a glaring pattern to be observed there. Companies really are not people, if people don't want them, they can cease to exist. If the UK for example is really able to say no to Palantir, can they do it countrywide?

Fines aside (let's be real, they're just taxes at this point since no company goes bankrupt from fines these days), what company is facing meaningful consequence for harming society?

Vote with dollars? Ok...but back to my pessimism earlier, I guess I don't need to vote at the ballot then right? Let's just vote with our wallets instead?

If Palantir really is so evil (and I'm not saying that, I don't know enough , although I've probably used their stuff more than most), at minimum, tell me what sort of a vote will lead to their extinction. if they broke the law, tell me who I can vote for to imprison the law breakers. If they didn't break the law because one didn't exist to prohibit their actions to begin with, then who will pass the laws required so I can vote for them? Why are we not talking about whatever practice Palantir is in the habit of doing, and how to criminalize that? Maybe we can't in the US, but this is Europe, I would hope they'd have better luck.

This sort of thinking and action-taking doesn't seem to exist here in the US. I don't think we're able to function that way anymore.

To friends in Europe and elsewhere: Take heed and be warned. Being able to organize and resist companies and laws, that's something you should fight with all your strength over.

But looking at this site, it isn't very convincing. I know of more serious accusations against Palantir that aren't listed there. Enabling mass deportations and gaza, yeah.. that's Microsoft, Google and Cisco as well. Their CEO, yeah.. Elon says a lot worse things about a lot more things, are his satellites banned in the UK? at least is the UK gov banned from using them? He's been caught aiding Russia with his sats a couple of times now.

My observation is that a more holistic approach and measures are needed. A glaring lack of consequences over all.

1 hour ago
karlitooo 1 hour ago
Mostly the x is evil crowd are reasoning based on political affiliation. As is the GoodLaw Project and Jolyon Maugham who have a history of doing so.

All media is agitprop now. If the CEO of a company says things that oppose the political chorus of either side, they become subject to witch hunts such as this.

Individuals are losing their ability to reason with ideas

MoltenMan 4 hours ago
I can't say I understand the Palantir hate. Isn't it just a database analytics SaaS? Why not hate Google as well because government employees who do things you don't like use Google? Is the Palantir hate just manufactured pointless rage or is there an actual reason behind it?
max_ 19 minutes ago
Palantir is a spyware company and the CEO Alex Karp has explicitly said that thier goal is to use their tooling to create fear in people and kill people (i.e people deemed enemies of the United States)
m4ck_ 3 hours ago
Palantir puts money in some of the worst people on this planet's pockets, that's reason enough? Theil and co are trying to set up their little "arbeit macht frei" cities and replace democracy with some kind of neo-feudalism where his kind get to play absolute monarch.
p0w3n3d 52 minutes ago
Everyone here is writing as if it was obvious, but I need more details. Could you please share any links on the subject?
BrenBarn 4 hours ago
I think a fair number of people who hate Palantir do hate Google too.
aprilthird2021 3 hours ago
Palantir makes AI to determine if who you are auto droning is a valid target or not. You can imagine why people dislike that, especially given that it's been deployed in Palestine
pageandrew 3 hours ago
Would you prefer that militaries have less-capable software to make targeting decisions?
1 hour ago
hackable_sand 2 hours ago
I would prefer that militaries do not deliberately genocide civilians and antagonize non-combatants.
XorNot 1 hour ago
That's a "motherhood statement"[1] - you haven't answered the question.

Militaries make targeting decisions with data. That's entirely separate to whether they have been ordered by civilian government to target something, and Palantir do not control that part of decision making (you as a voter do! You did vote right?)

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/motherhood_statement

tombert 2 hours ago
You should probably hate Google too, but I think a lot of Palantir hate comes from (well deserved) hatred for Peter Thiel, who has injected himself directly into conservative politics.

Billionaires buying their way into the political system should be hated implicitly, no matter their political affiliation.

lithocarpus 4 hours ago
Palantir is more directly involved in the surveillance state and military industrial complex.

Not saying Google isn't, but it's at least not as public or blatant, and is much less of what Google does overall.

s5300 4 hours ago
[dead]
xboxnolifes 2 hours ago
Palantir might just pretty up the display of the data that is aggregated by other vendors, which source their data from other vendors, who collect their data from "opt-in" services, which technically explain how they work somewhere in a 200 page ToS. But at some point you gotta look at the sum of the incremental issues and say enough is enough.
1 hour ago
5 hours ago
ekjhgkejhgk 6 hours ago
> the British people love the NHS because we’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

LOL I've said the same thing! Turns out I do have something in common with Peter Thiel.

The difference is he's speaking in the context of US which makes his comments on the NHS just disgusting hypocrisy.