Legal campaigners challenge UK.gov decision to redact NHS-Palantir contract British legal campaigners are preparing to take on UK government over its decision to redact swathes of a contract describing how Palantir would work with the country's enormous public health system, the NHS, under the controversial Federated Data Platform. When it was published on the eve of the holiday season in December …
Several civil servants are suffering from Backhanderitis and no doubt some elected officials should immediately have the brown envelopes removed.
We accept that Big Pharma needs to suck data but there is no reason NECS couldn't have done all this to help fund the NHS. Big Pharma would provide a few quid upfront for the system anyway.
Who is "we"? Nobody in their right mind - which excludes neoliberals, of course - wants Big Pharma to get its claws on the NHS in the smallest way. Pharmaceutical companies are meant to be suppliers, not controllers.
And Palantir aren't even Big Pharma. They're just a data theft outfit, named (lest we forget) for Tolkien's magic spying devices that turn you mad and evil when you use them. They have no purpose for getting engaged in this contract except to sell patients' confidential medical history to insurance companies so they can be targeted with advertisements. Fuck that noise.
The politico scum behind this most definitely have backhanderitis, you're right about that. It's not a physical ailment, though, it's all in their heads. As such I recommend immediate amputation.
Let us not forget, either, who owns Palantir, the company named after the madness-inducing seeing-stones. That's right, Peter Thiel, they guy who said that "[I] no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible". If that sort of political rhetoric sounds familiar, that's because it was very popular in parts of Europe about 90 years ago. (spoiler: that didn't end well)
The very idea of allowing a firm that was founded primarily to mine data to provide "more security with less privacy" (his words, not mine) access to anything in this country, let alone NHS data, is sheer madness. We should be looking very closely at whom, in our government, has been drinking the fascism kool-aid, and then promptly eject them from office.
Simply put, this man's personal beliefs are incompatible with democratic freedom and human rights.
Indeed. And on the subject of Peter Thiel: he's a literal leech and vampire who believes you can prolong life by receiving blood transfusions from the young. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse isn't so much the analogy as employing Count Dracula to be the manager of the blood bank.
Perhaps, the current government and civil servants insistent on procuring things from such people are also incompatible with democratic freedom and human rights?
I mean, it's stating the obvious, isn't it?
You will own nothing, rent everything, and be happy with it!
Wouldn't it be bloody amazing if 2 counties trusts shared data instead? I live in Bucks and when I've been hospitalised in Berks every time upon discharge the Berks hospital prints a tome that I have to take to my GP in Bucks so they can SCAN IT IN and add it to my patient record!! FFS we're in the 2nd decade of the 2000's and this is a fecking joke! How can they not "see" the data is astounding. Looks like we need to issue immediate eye & mental acuity tests to the NHS administators to be able to determine if they are FIT to operate the system.
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