Palantir trial plugs into UK financial watchdog's data trove US data miner Palantir has quietly landed inside the UK's financial watchdog, plugging into a trove of sensitive data as Whitehall simultaneously insists it wants to wean itself off exactly this kind of dependency. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has handed the American analytics biz a three-month trial contract worth …
A simple search shows you how much of a bubble the AI bollocks is. Not only that, but the company that were using AI for their accounts. When it came to spending the money it said they had made, it didn't exist. It just made the numbers up to what it thought they wanted to see and no one was bothering to check its work!
Hmm, lets see ...
Palantir is US based, hence is governed by US law, hence any contract terms are worthless. Microsoft at least have a track record of standing up to the US TLAs, but they have had to admit they can't guarantee data sovereignty. Palatir seem ready to suck up to the US TLAs. Make of that what you will.
Just days ago someone suggested it's no big deal for your friendly local bank teller to ask you a few questions about something unusual.
It won't be the "friendly teller."
It will be Palantir digging through every data point about you until AI finds either a false positive, or 42 quid of unreported income from when you fixed your neighbor's printer in 2013.
Now add in digital ID to harvest even more datapoints on every subject citizen.
There is absolutely zero reason for Palantir to have any kind of contracts with the UK government.
Yet, here we are.
MI5 is asleep at the wheel yet again. You may question what exactly civil servants are being paid for. By the looks of it, it's to look away and pretend everything is fine.
According to the latest Private Eye (No. 1671, p12, "Shites of the Round Table"), the NHS Palantir deal was brokered by.. one Peter Mandelson, via his lobbying firm Global Counsel, which was paid by Palantir for access to the Department of Health and Social Care.
Reg readers may also remember Mandy as the author of the Digital Economy Bill aka Mandybill, now the Digital Economy Act.
I wonder if had Mandy not made the amendments lobbied for by Google et al, the bulk data-slurping by the tech companies for training their shit-o-matic models would have been more difficult legally.
> Reg readers may also remember Mandy as the author of the Digital Economy Bill aka Mandybill, now the Digital Economy Act.
Readers may also remember Mandelson as a longtime friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson took Epstein's money for intel and was later arrested for public misconduct because of it.
AP: Former UK ambassador Mandelson released on bail after arrest in Epstein probe
Everything he's lobbied for should be considered tainted until evidence proves otherwise.
As for Palantir?
Epstein called Peter Thiel ’89 a ‘great friend,’ offered financial advice
Allowing Palantir any kind of access to national infrastructure and governmental organisations, particularly given how embedded they are with the current administration in the Whitehouse, is nothing short of treasonous. It might be accidental treason, borne of incompetence, but it’s treason none the less - and the people responsible for this idiocy should be looking forward to a stay at his majesty’s pleasure. It won’t happen of course - the rot goes to the top.
Whitehall: From the toxic water privatisation debacle we've learned our lesson that handing critical public services to international corporates doesn't end well.
Also Whitehall: let's hand critical public services to international AI corporates to deliver imagined new efficiencies because this time it’s different.
