Caitlin Johnstone
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.
Hello again from medConfidential,
It’s been a while since our last newsletter, and if you signed up to find out if NHS England would provide more details to help you with your choices around its half-billion pound Palantir platform before it “goes live” at the end of March, the answer is now clear. They won’t.
NHS England has said pretty much nothing new in public since before Christmas. The ‘Department of Health in England’ is instead leaving you to puzzle out the process, and to do all the work. As of this newsletter, your choices boil down to this:
“We are demanding urgent answers”, say a coalition from the Doctors’ Association UK, Just Treatment and the National Pensioners Convention.
Last month they sent a legal letter to the government about the plans to centralise all UK health data into a new database, the “Federated Data Platform” (FDP). The government is currently running the procurement process for the management of the FDP and “US spy-tech firm Palantir is widely considered the bid frontrunner.”
The coalition are concerned “because, despite multiple requests, we still don’t have all the information we need about exactly how this platform will work, if and how the public will be consulted and whether the government will seek patient consent before they completely overhaul the way our most sensitive health data is managed.”
They plan to launch a judicial review if they don’t get answers.
The group say that that “Palantir mainly has a history in military, security, and policing – not health.” They also point out that “Palantir’s chair, Peter Thiel recently described British love of the NHS as “Stockholm Syndrome” adding: “In theory, you just rip the whole thing from the ground and start over.”
According to their case page: “A recent YouGov poll illustrated current public opinion about the plans. The results showed that if the FDP is brought in and run by a private company – like Palantir – 48% of adults in England who have not yet opted out [of sharing data] are likely to do so.
If even half that figure stopped sharing their health data it would be catastrophic for the future quality of NHS data – one of the most precious health resources we have as a country.”
Read the latest updates on the case here.
Thank you for support,
Maeve at CrowdJustice
We need your help to protect your rights. |
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But NHS England claims we have nothing to worry about. It says the information it will share under this new contract is “pseudonymous,” meaning that identifying details will be removed. But the truth is, it’s not hard to piece together anonymised information to identify people. And do you really want a company like Palantir knowing what’s in your medical records? We don’t. That’s why we’re working with a prospective claimant to make sure that every patient can opt out of having their information shared with a private company like Palantir. We will also be funding specialist lawyers to examine how NHS bodies treat patients’ requests to keep their data private. This is so we can make sure they’re acting in accordance with the law – and help us set things right if not. The more of us who stand up and say no to companies like Palantir making millions from our medical records, the safer all our data will be. Can you help us with a donation? |
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Best wishes, Good Law Project Team |
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7 December 2021 — Unlimited Hangout
The controversial data mining firm, whose history and rise has long been inextricably linked with the CIA and the national security state, will now use its software to identify and prioritize the same minority groups that it has long oppressed on behalf of the US military and US intelligence.
31st March 2021 — True Publica
At TruePublica, we took the view that Britain should not be ‘world-beating’ at being the most surveilled nation of any Western democracy in the world. For five years we reported with our partners that state surveillance and the ending of privacy was a matter of public interest, not a political plaything for some politicians to line their pockets with.
8 March 2021 — True Publica
The story below tells of alarming backroom deals being done without public or parliamentary scrutiny into the highly sensitive (and extremely valuable) NHS patient data system. The company involved is Palantir, a highly controversial American company that TruePublica has reported on several times in the last few years – that was at the centre of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Brexit scandal.
14 January 2021 — True Publica
By TruePublica: No country has willingly left a postwar trading bloc, especially one of the three global super-powers of today. And because there is no precedent, it is true to say that not only does Brexit represent a very large threat to Britain’s economic future prospects – it does so because it’s just a gamble. And the so-called trade deal Boris Johnson has signed with the EU is very weak. Much of that weakness will develop over the coming months, especially as 80 per cent of Britain’s economy has yet to be negotiated within that agreement.
11 November 2020 — Unlimited Hangout
British and American state intelligence agencies are “weaponizing truth” to quash vaccine hesitancy as both nations prepare for mass inoculations, in a recently announced “cyber war” to be commanded by AI-powered arbiters of truth against information sources that challenge official narratives.
19 June 2020 — Open Democracy
Health Secretary Matt Hancock at the press briefing, 18th June – PA Images
8 June 2020 — True Publica
By Mary Fitzgerald and Corri Crider: Hours before facing court proceedings from openDemocracy over its massive NHS COVID-19 data deal with private tech firms, the UK government has caved to pressure and released all the contracts governing its deals with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and controversial AI firms Faculty and Palantir.
28 May 2020 — True Publica
By Rob Woodward: Palantir is a special ops company. It is considered at best as a controversial and highly opaque company that has long sought to sell governments an unmatched power to sift and exploit information of any kind for any purpose. Its billionaire owner Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, through Palantir has worked for years to boost the global dragnet of the NSA and its international partners and was in fact co-created with American spies.
30 March 2020 — True Publica
By Rob Woodward – TruePublica: Peter Theil is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies. Palantir is a data-mining company – nice words for it activity of surveillance and espionage. Their activities have been found in the past to breach all sorts of privacy laws. Its algorithms vacuumed up emails and browser histories, GPS locations from smartphones, printer and download activity, and transcripts of digitally recorded phone conversations. They comb through financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for personal and business connections and work places and at home.
6 September 2019 — Mint Press
Following another catastrophic mass shooting or crisis event, Orwellian “solutions” are set to be foisted on a frightened American public by the very network connected, not only to Jeffrey Epstein, but to a litany of crimes and a frightening history of plans to crush internal dissent in the United States.
by Jeremy Loffredo
by Whitney Webb
The New Dark Age 