Palantir wins £9M contract to run UK firearms licensing: CIA-backed biz to hold gun, bomb, and poison records

Palantir has secured a £9 million ($12 million) government contract to provide software for managing firearms licensing across the UK. The US spy-tech biz will also handle Home Office licensing for explosives, explosive precursors, and poisons. The contract covers a replacement for the National Firearms Licensing Management …

[Tom Chiverton 1]

If it's COTS why are the usual suspects delivering it ?!?

[EdSaxby]

100% agree. There is no reason why Palantir should be selected. Any local vendor should be able to offer the capability to implement a suitable system.

It really seems an unusual decision.

[cookiecutter]

Totally predictable.

You could get a US firm setup by a known white supremicist that is highly suspect with staff offshored in India, going up against a British SME with 100% British staff based here who'll spend their money here & is too small to do the tax shenanigans the Silicon Valley firms do and Government Digital Services will ALWAYS go for the Americans.

No one hates British business and British people making any money than the civil service and Government purchasing.

Other Governments have a domestic first policy yet the UK Government seems to have a solid "We're not giving out ANYTHING if the headquarters and workers are based here"

There should be ZERO US/Indian/Canadian/etc firms supplying to UK Government and it's stunning that in the price cards you actually have : Onshore, Nearshore, Offshore pricing options...There should be ONE - Onshore & that should be that. No Offshoring for any Government Department, Council, NHS organisation, Police, etc.

When the Government doesn't give 2 shits about UK jobs, is it any surprise that private corporations don't either & go to "maximise profits" by offshoring to the cheapest 3rd world country they can find?

Sweepstakes on the next news story about some millionaire or bilionaire or some MBA going on about how "unproductive UK workers are" or "no one wants to join the army" or "no one has any loyalty and won't work weekends for free anymore" -

I'm skipping Tech London this year because they are crowing about "Stands from 130 Countries!!" totally oblivious ot the fact that there should only be stands from ONE country at an event called TECH LONDON & last year I spent so much time trying to explain this concept to confused looking civil servants from the Dept of Business who couldn't understand why I would never advise any A level student to do a STEM degree anymore that I had to actually drink myself to sleep that night.

The fuckwittery is stunning!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pesky white supremicists hiring non-white people at the expense of mostly white people! Is there no end to their skulduggery!

[werdsmith]

There's a long tradition of it going back to the 17th century.

[Rogerborg 2.0]

Perhaps because they might actually deliver it on time and on budget.

[Ken G]

If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

or perhaps they bid consistently lower than all other providers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Or perhaps they consistently provide the biggest backhanders to those who issue the contracts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Ding ding ding! Let's see what you've won!

[Dan 55]

Good job the UK decided not to use Palantir for everything two months ago, otherwise it would have egg on its face.

[Aladdin Sane]

Unfortunately, this procurement was probably already underway at this point, and they can't possibly apply new decisions mid process.

[hoola]

Just like Fujitsu.

If they had been binned then Palantir would simply have taken the government to court. That is the way it works and why it is so difficult to get this companies out of public projects.

The private sector just see the public sector as a cash cow to be stripped of as much money as posisble.

The problem is that many of these outfits have very deep pockets.

[SundogUK]

"The private sector just see the public sector as a cash cow to be stripped of as much money as posisble.

The problem is that many of these outfits have very deep pockets."

This makes no sense.

[Rogerborg 2.0]

Which UK competitor would even pick up the phone for a £9m contract, let alone deliver on time and on budget?

[elsergiovolador]

Funny that UK government destroyed domestic IT sector so they can now say exactly that.

[Rogerborg 2.0]

Trying to avoid answering the question is also answering the question.

[cookiecutter]

palantir is not magic; it's basically even more evil Salesforce.

For £9 milliom I could hire a couple of DBAs, build it on a nutanix hardware platform in a EU cloud, pay a Data engineer & data scientist for the insights part. Do the networking, infras, security myself , make it far more resilient than anything else out there, set it up so that it can easily be moved between clouds or even back on premises

and STILL pay full taxes, no offshoring, I could even hire 10 graduates for the experts to train m and bish bash bosh, 18 months bang! Give everyone £100k bonus and STILL have a couple of million left over to buy myself a yacht

[elsergiovolador]

Civil Service

Or US Corporations' Service?

I think Civil Service needs a reminder who pays their wages and funds their golden penshions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Civil Service

Who pays their wages isn't the same as who funds their retirement.

[hoola]

Re: Civil Service

Now try and understand how public sector procurement works and why it is impossible to prevent events like this.

It is a game of whack-a-mole that the procurement teams cannot win as the private sector use every trick in the book to take advantage of the process.

Successful - don't deliver or just increase the cost, no problem, blame the government/council etc and shrug shoulders whilst continuing to take millions in payments.

Unsuccessful - sue the public sector body because you think you have been treated unfairly.

[SundogUK]

Re: Civil Service

Nope. The civil service are just fucking incompetent.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Civil Service

The procurement rules were not given to us by God. They can be changed. The reason they are not changed is that wine and steak is incredibly tasty and so after that no one has appetite to do anything about it.

[Rol]

Stasi Unlimited

I have no doubt that if I started up a company called Stasi 4 U, I would be getting inquiries from a number of "democracies" asking if I could give them an even more enhanced service than the current crew of misanthropes.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Stasi Unlimited

Were you friends with Epstein? I think that might be one of the keys to procurement success.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Stasi Unlimited

That's the Mossad, not the Stasi.

[Will Godfrey]

Oh For Fuck Sake

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse

[Ken G]

Re: Oh For Fuck Sake

What ever made you think that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Oh For Fuck Sake

Yanks with knowledge of my Explosives License!

That's me banned from the US then :-(

[[e-mail]]

Wow

Really dumb, dare I say American, move.

[Sproggit]

Hypocrisy on Steriods

According to Google [E&OE], there are currently over 250 specific undergraduate courses in the UK dedicated to software development and software engineering, across more than 85 universities in the UK. If you include broad Computer Science degrees, that number jumps to over 2000 courses taught at nearly 200 institutions.

And yet apparently our government - which worked extensively with UK universities to develop the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic - apparently doesn't see the value of developing government-university partnerships to promote the development of UK IT Skills by sponsoring technical universities to set up commercial arms able to write software for government use?

Even the UK's "Local Government" software - your Basic Council Tax, Non-Domestic Rates and Benefits systems come from 3 major suppliers, including NEC of Japan...

How come Rachel Reeves keeps saying that she wants to promote British Industry and get more British citizens to invest in Britain, when **the government she works for can't be bothered to do that itself**???

Just stop and think for a moment about what you'd need for a firearms register. Names, addresses, details of firearms held, details of qualifications. Maybe a few more odds and ends. Exactly how is this significantly different from any other sports and social club? (Apart from the national scope and potentially the number of members). Apparently there are something in the region of 550,000 license-holders across the UK - though of course numbers is just a one-dimensional scale and has no bearing on the complexity of the software.

And the Strava Run Club boasts over 1,000,000 members; the private PureGym chain has 1,500,000 active members. I'm betting that PureGym didn't pay *nine million quid* for their membership database.

So why the #### are we expected to believe that this is necessary? Or value for money? Or that a British company couldn't do a better job for less?

Exactly what is the root of all the corruption in the UK's national government? It can't be incompetence - what we're seeing is just to widespread for that. This is a concerted effort to waste tax-payer money, allow US corporations to come in to the UK and gain another exploitative foothold.

At this rate we would be better off to apply to become the 51st state and be done with it. At least if we did that the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Starbucks, Walmart and all the rest wouldn't be allowed to pull their usual nasty "IP licensing deal" to magic all their profits out of our economy.

Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

It feels like basic CRM/Asset management software would cover this.

Failing that there are other national registers for things. DVLA, Paedophiles, Companies, Electoral, GRO (for births/marriages etc),National Poisons Information Service, TV licence, alcohol licence etc …. What do they know ??

[hoola]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

It could be done in Excel and then saved on a USB stick or unsecured cloud storage....

Almost no cost involved!

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

Are you suggesting using Excel as a kind of database? On these forums?

I'll get my coat before things kick off.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

"Names, addresses, details of firearms held, details of qualifications. Maybe a few more odds and ends."

Like, how many times involved with police for any reason, mental health reports, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Licensing

See also further down same article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Gun_crime

"Exactly how is this significantly different from any other sports and social club?"

Are you genuinely dim? Maybe people actually die as a result of the misuse of firearms, whereas not many murders are committed with a running machine. Thank goodness that the UK has one of the most restrictive set of laws in the world concerning firearms. I wonder whether there will be a change in the gun crime statistics before and after Palantir.

[Sproggit]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

I think you may have completely misunderstood the context in which I made the statement you quote, so for other readers and the record, let me clarify.

The point I was trying to make was *not* that holding a firearm - or having the right to use one - was in any way comparable with other sports or social activities. What I was pointing out was that the data architecture and basic application functionality of a register of firearms users was fundamentally similar to the data architecture and basic functionality that you might expect to see from a more-or-less generic sports or social club membership register.

Memberships have to be submitted...

There may be some form of vetting required - for example a scuba club may accept basic details but then have to vet claimed qualifications [gas mix diving, depth rating, etc].

Once vetting completes, a membership record would move in to the main register.

Periodically there would be requirements to verify contact details remained correct.

There would be a requirement to keep annotated notes with each member.

There would be a requirement to issue subscription reminders and track payments, to ensure that membership fees [or licensing fees in the case of firearms] remained up-to-date.

Now there are a bunch of other things that generic club membership software may provide that a firearms register would not - for example managing competitions and sporting events.

But disabling or removing functionality from a starting-point package is a lot easier than adding in new functionality to the same.

So... I was not for one moment suggesting that, somehow, a software package for recording details of firearms users was in any way comparable with people in e.g. a tennis club.

I was suggesting that *the basic data architecture and application functionality* was sufficiently close to likely make it easier to start with a "club membership" base and then tweak as required.

But more than that, the point I was trying to make was that there is no way on Earth that delivering this should require the government to spend *nine million quid*.

-=-=-=-

It's unfortunate that you misread or misunderstood my point, but I hope that clears it up for you.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

I'd happily take the job on for £8.5M, although I suspect a fair whack of that would go on infrastructure costs and not into my pocket, since national databases need at least two data centres for even basic redundancy.

[Sproggit]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

You're right... and for resiliency and performance reasons we'd want some form of scalable, modular solution.

According to Google, the Home Office runs it's digital infrastructure through a "Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT)" department, which is in the process of transitioning away from a legacy Hendon Data Centre toward a "highly secure cloud environments and dedicated public-sector data centres".

There's also the "Crown Hosting Data Centre" project, a joint venture between the Cabinet Office and Ark Data Centres. Crown Hosting provides a "pre-approved government framework"...

So I think that in terms of hosting a national register with secure access from county level police forces, the UK has plenty of options...

[rg287]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

Woooosh.

The point being made up there is that the required software is not particularly complex. It’s a basic CRUD database to track the progression of applications/renewals, the assets held by each certificate holder and a couple of integrations/flags for things like medical records. It’s sensitive data, but not a difficult application to build.

And in answer to your rhetoric, bobody ever died because of the quality of FLMS.

In terms of mass shootings, we’ve fortunately only had 4 in the UK (not statistically significant), of which three were Police human incompetence/error. Plymouth was down to the licensing office being “a dangerous shambles” (in the coroners’s words), Dunblane similarly saw CSP eviscerated in Lord Cullen’s inquiry, with multiple attempts by officers to revoke the perpetrator’s license overruled by management. Similar concerns were raised ahead of Hungerford and not acted on.

Weird how they don’t have these issues in Europe, despite much higher rates of gun ownership <mutters something about post-Thatcher policing and public services>

The only one that the Police can’t be blamed for is Whitehaven, there a certificate holder ran into depression and went postal. It’s unlikely there’s much way to foresee that (even if you further tightened regs from where they are now, the people that need firearms vocationally - farmers - are also the ones most likely to have a quiet breakdown in the privacy of their farm).

Interestingly, Lord Cullen’s inquiry into Dunblane didn’t recommend banning pistols. Said there would be no point and at most you could ban individual ownership but people should still be able to go to clubs and shoot. Blair banned the lot anyway. What Cullen DID recommend was training for Firearm Licensing Officers. Blair DIDN’T do that because it’s boring and doesn’t get headlines like bans do. Thirty years later, in the wake of Plymouth, there is a prototype training course being rolled out.

Don’t ever believe that the UK firearms licensing system is robust or a “gold standard”. It looks good on the surface in the same way Reform promise the world. But it’s cobbled together from knee jerk reactions and feels. There are gaping holes and years of labour lost in make-work that has no public safety benefit but sounded good to someone in Whitehall during a crisis. Palantir can’t fix that - the workflow is baked into the statutory basis of licensing. The way “slots” and one-for-one variations work, the distinctions between Section 1 and 2 Certificates. It’s not been meaningfully updated since 1968.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

Like, how many times involved with police for any reason, mental health reports, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Licensing

If only the po-po had something else that did this already, like, oh I don't know, the PNC.

It's amazing that some people will choose to blather on as if they know what they're talking about, whilst clearly having no clue whatsoever.

[Rob Daglish]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

I don't know about anyone else, but every time I've had to use a running machine I've definitely wanted to murder someone...

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Hypocrisy on Steriods

Not to take Palantir's side here for one second, but I assume those costs are not just to design the database to hold this information, which I'm sure most people on here could do a decent job of in only a couple of days, but also the hosting of this in data centres (plural, because there are almost certainly DR requirements), and the access control and management tasks that go with that.

So, the question is; is this £9M p/a, or £9M for the initial software, and then the police have to provide or pay for their own hosting?

[PhillW]

Palantir...... the C(R)apita of public service software with super turbo charged data slurp....

[EdSaxby]

Palantir has its tentacles so deep into law enforcement and justice services. You would be hard pressed to believe this is above board.

[Ken G]

I believe it's completely above board. Palantir are willing to take a loss on delivery of the project to get entry to the UK secure databases.

So long as they meet the delivery criteria, which I'm sure they're capable of doing, all other things being equal the lowest bid wins.

[Sproggit]

Umm...

I take the objective logic of your point... but I find it very, very, *very* hard to believe that a bid of [checks notes] *nine million quid* represents the best value/lowest bid to write a relatively simple database.

[Aladdin Sane]

You're confusing malice with incompetence.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an expensive SQL database.

[DoctorNine]

That's precisely what I was thinking.

[Philter12]

I suspect there's a far amount of integration work with local forces so the local firearms officer can pop round for a tea ^H^H^H pretend they didnt see any security issues ^h^h^h inspect the secure storage solution.

But yeah, very expensive.

[Paul Hovnanian]

If Palantir is involved, I suspect it will be a lot more than a simple SQL database. Palantir is big in link analysis and pattern recognition. So, who owns what kind of hardware. Who do they know and associate with. What do those known associates own. What sorts of links to other organizations does everyone have.

In other words: Law enforcement intelligences wet dream.

[hoola]

The assumption being that the information will be made available.......

[Aladdin Sane]

Law enforcement intelligence

Oxymoron, Shirley?

[elsergiovolador]

So, who owns what kind of hardware. Who do they know and associate with. What do those known associates own.

Exactly why companies like this should have been excluded from bidding. In fact, this should have been done in house entirely.

[Sproggit]

If Only...

If only "law enforcement intelligence" was actually intelligent, or actually worked.

In November 2015, Islamic terrorists staged attacks in Paris that killed *130* victims and injured *416*. It turns out that the French authorities had been tracking the terrorists - including by their cell phones - before the attacks. It turns out that the attackers had links with one of the two suicide bombers who in March 2016 caused carnage at Brussels airport.

One of the most sobering things I took away from the 2015 Paris attacks is that the French authorities had the terrorists under such good surveillance that they knew exactly how and where those who "got away" had fled the scene - within hours. They were able to report how they left the country and where they ended up.

I make these observations just to remind us that no matter how good it is, a register of users of firearms is what a technologist would call a "Reactive" control. It doesn't prevent the misuse of firearms, so it's not preventative... it doesn't detect the misuse of firearms, so it's not detective. It just helps the police to improve their clean-up rate, *after* the crime has already been committed. And sadly, in the case of a firearms offense, that could mean after someone has been murdered or injured.

I think it's important to consider this objectively, because [granted, less so in this immediate case], a lot of the policy around activities or things that are dangerous to the public come down to a trade-off, a decision between the encroachment/elimination of personal and civil liberties on the one hand, in return for an improvement in safety on the other.

It is critically important that citizens don't allow themselves to be bamboozled by governments that claim that having a firearms register will somehow drive down gun-related crime. There is a narrow chance that it *might* (never say never), but what is much more likely is that *after* the crime, the police will be able to identify the perpetrator.

Any time a government proposes removing or reducing any freedoms or rights that you have today, they will almost certainly tell you that it is "necessary" in order to protect something else - for the "greater good". It's generally a very, very good idea to take a close look at that argument and test it vigorously. This might be a shock, but sometimes governments lie just to get headlines. Especially in the wake of a tragedy, where they feel some compulsion to be seen to be "doing something".

If the government was really serious about firearms safety, they would follow the example set by Japan - where it is virtually impossible to own or possess a gun - and which has among the lowest rates of gun violence anywhere in the world.

When a government *doesn't* do that (but does something else), you know you're watching "security theatre".

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: If Only...

It just helps the police to improve their clean-up rate, *after* the crime has already been committed. And sadly, in the case of a firearms offense[sic], that could mean after someone has been murdered or injured.

...and only then, in the cases where the firearm used was a registered one which hadn't been stolen. Somehow I doubt that organised crime gangs are diligently getting their firearms licences and registering their "straps" before spraying bullets towards rival gang members and catching unsuspecting members of the public in the crossfire.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

The computer says no

I expect there will be data slurping and cross referencing. Add DNA records they've managed to slip in from NHS/GP/ancestry sites, familial history of mental illness, political affiliations etc

[Anonymous Coward]

or alternatively, yes sirree!

Inbred, family history of mental illness, links to low level crime and some youth hooliganism - give the boy an M16 and a red baseball cap!

[elsergiovolador]

Re: or alternatively, yes sirree!

If one Austrian painter could see this.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Just more proof

The UK is a rump state. The powers that be would sell off every blade of grass to the American regime.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Just more proof

It's worse, they'll pay American regime to take the grass.

[Anonymous Coward]

pardon me for saying, but...

That's absolutely fucking stupid, and since it was done by a government, totally believable.

It would be like having your obnoxious neighbor keeping the envelope with your spare house key, alarm codes, and safe combinations.

[Nifty]

It's not fair, the UK should have been allowed to outsource the actual work to India, not the US.

[MachDiamond]

"It's not fair, the UK should have been allowed to outsource the actual work to India, not the US."

For any government system like this, there should be a prohibition for it going to any company outside of the UK. Even at double the cost, a good portion of the money is put back into the economy via taxes so that increase is far less than one would think at first glance. There's a magnifying effect of the money put in the hands of workers when they pay for things such as rents, utilities and even groceries (also often taxed yet again). Move the work out of country and it's more people on assistance increasing the real cost.

[elsergiovolador]

UK government is paying silly money for mediocre, bottom of the barrel talent. They could easily pay £300-500k wages per IT worker and it still would likely be magnitude cheaper.

They could get top talent and get proper work done for benefit of tax payers.

But we all know wine and steak is too difficult to pass on.

[cookiecutter]

the sheer stupid fuckery of civil servants really annoys meme. A UK native worker hired by govt is immediately 50% cheaper as they pay taxes here right back to the government. the fact that civil servants are too dumb to understand they are NOT a business really makes me angry

[M.V. Lipvig]

What makes you think you didn't? American companies are middlemen for India these days.

[Alex King]

A monumentally stupid decision

… even for government procurement.

If Palantir are offering to build and run all that for £900k a year, then they are making their money elsewhere or in other ways.

There should have been red flags, red flashing lights and sirens all over that bid. Instead it’s actually awarded to Fashco.

There should be a legal challenge to this.

[Winkypop]

Lord Sauron

We need another Isildur.

[Mickey Porkpies]

got the T Shirt

having worked in Government for years it is unsurprising that decision makers who have little understanding of delivery only costs and reports have moved on this. Most of my career was trying to explain to management why the suppliers promised endless functionality for little cost (it didn't exist) and even with the likes of Crapita and Fukitju history still went on to award contracts that later failed on the same issues. Same story just different companies. The problem is they think only large companies can deliver at scale and are so poor at setting scope that the suppliers define it though sales pitches. Basically stop employing professional managers and go back to IT professionals making decisions (or at least listen to them) hey ho

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: got the T Shirt

The problem is they think only large companies can deliver at scale and are so poor at setting scope that the suppliers define it though sales pitches.

That's just one of the problems. Another is the clunkiness and painful overheads of the public sector's procurement platforms and frameworks. The typical SME can't afford to employ the small army of oxygen thieves and MBA wastes of space that are essential for these things. The likes of Crapita and Palantir can. Which has the obvious consequences.

FWIW my company has stopped bidding on modest (~£1M) public sector IT projects. It's just not worth the costs and hassle of filling out all the paperwork on bollocks like our recycling and energy conservation policies, GDPR compliance, disability employment regulations, money laundering, anti-slavery protections, sanctions busting, ID checks at Companies House, etc, etc. All of which has to be done before you get to register to see the tender documents. And then jump through all sorts of stupidity to submit an offer on the actual project.

That poison goes beyond central government. It percolates into local government, education, NHS, DVLA, regulators, etc.

[Anrtryg]

Wrong business!

9 million quid for a CRUD application with a bit of logic on top??

I'm in the wrong business! I should've gone into software development!

Hang on ....

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail our new corporate overlords

Palantir’s ‘Manifesto’ and the Digital Sovereignty of Other Nations

Martin Wrigley MP: "the ramblings of a supervillain" and a "parody of a RoboCop film."

[goodjudge]

Re: All hail our new corporate overlords

Indeed. Remember that this guy thinks the Antichrist is real and is coming soon, then the 'final battle' will happen shortly after and the 'righteous ones' like himself will be Raptured. And now he's going to know exactly where all the privately-owned guns in the UK are. What could possibly go wrong?

[Rogerborg 2.0]

The only thing we can be sure of is that Polis Scotland will commission their own bespoke system which will cost £45 million and be cancelled after 10 years of non-delivery.

[R Soul]

Look on the bright side!

At least somebody will get a nice motorhome and a few pricy coffee machines out of it. And maybe a Calmac ferry or two with whatever's left over,

[Vestas]

Can't be any worse....

... than what's been in place for the last ten years.

You've got more chance of making contact with aliens than Leics Police firearms team - and the aliens will make more sense.

Institutionally incompetent. Won't make any difference what software they use, nothing will change.

[werdsmith]

Re: Can't be any worse....

I was a firearms certificate holder for shotguns back in the 1990s.

The licences needed renewing after 3 years. When mine expired the police were immediately on it, as I put the gun into a shop for storage while it was waiting to be sold. They visited the shop and checked it was there.