Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Health workers and activists ramp up their campaign to oppose surveillance company Palantir’s role in managing NHS data

Health workers and activists in Britain are intensifying their campaign against US-based surveillance and data company Palantir, as Keir Starmer’s government accelerates its push to involve the notorious firm in managing National Health Service (NHS) data.

Palantir first gained a foothold in the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic, securing contracts outside standard procurement processes and enjoying popularity among high-ranking health officials. The company, infamous for its involvement in operations such as the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and migrant persecution under the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), soon expanded its role in Britain. By last year, it had won a £330 million (USD 417 million) contract to implement the Federated Data Platform (FDP), intended to modernize medical data management across England.

Not all NHS institutions are currently able to share data because of differing systems. Both Conservative and Labour governments have identified this as the main reason for bottlenecks in the health system and claimed that resolving the problem would lead to improvements to care. However, organizations like Medact, Just Treatment, and Corporate Watch warn that entrusting this task to Palantir could deepen issues rather than solve them.

Similarly, many health experts have highlighted how the FDP would effectively lock the NHS into dependency on Palantir. The company’s systems are designed in a way to make data extraction difficult and integration with industry-standard analytics costly and complicated, so users are compelled to keep using them. “Palantir’s system pushes people to its own proprietary systems; and switching costs [for the NHS] will be very high,” Doctors’ Association and Foxglove warned in a 2023 report.

The current government is pushing forward with this form of private sector expansion in the NHS despite warnings from trusts and experts that the results will fall far short of expectations. In fact, some NHS organizations being forced to adopt the FDP under Labour’s administration have said that the new platform could result in a loss of functionality compared to the systems they currently rely on.

Read more: Labour considers expanding private sector role in NHS, undermining the already fragile public health system

While there is general agreement among analysts that data sharing and usage within the NHS could be significantly improved, they argue that these improvements can and should be achieved through local and regional initiatives. In contrast to the top-down model ushered in by the FDP, these initiatives would build on existing systems and expertise, avoiding handing over control to a private company with a track record of human rights abuses.

Concerns that the FDP could make the NHS entirely dependent on Palantir are sharpened by fears over how patient data might be used. As one of the world’s largest public healthcare systems, the NHS holds an unique health dataset. While such data has immense potential to strengthen public services, entrusting it to corporate partners poses great risks. For instance, it could be exploited for purposes such as tracking and criminalizing migrants—a practice that has been systematically pursued under Britain’s hostile environment policies.

Read more: Should health workers work with counter terrorism agencies?

Palantir takes pride in finding new applications for data, specifically to reinforce Western dominance. Given that the full scope of the FDP remains unclear, there is significant concern that NHS data could also be exploited to boost Palantir’s surveillance tools. These tools are already being deployed in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Palantir’s leadership has been outspoken in its support for Israel, openly aligning with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government even as it proceeded to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians. The company is actively testing—or rather, showcasing—its artificial intelligence (AI) models through Israel’s attacks in Palestine and Lebanon. This indicates a clear intent to monetize these tools further by marketing them to other states preparing to go on killing sprees.

Handing over NHS medical data to Palantir would deepen the Starmer administration’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes, health justice organizations warn. Such a move risks staining the NHS’s reputation, turning its dataset into a tool for oppression internationally while undermining public trust in the healthcare system at home.

Many had hoped that a change in government in July would mean an end to the FDP. However, “instead of hitting reset, Labour hit accelerate,” Just Treatment remarked during a No Palantir in the NHS meeting in November. This response reflects Labour’s priorities when it comes to the public healthcare provider. “If the government were setting out to implement reforms in the way that our data is held to improve health outcomes and improve the NHS, they would be going about it in a way that maximizes public trust, maximizes public and health service and health worker support for those initiatives,” the organization remarked during the meeting.

Instead, the government appears more interested in using national health data for economic gain. This approach aligns closely with recommendations from neoliberal policy advisors, such as those at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, who have recently called for the use of NHS data as a means to boost Britain’s economic standing.

Although the implementation of the FDP is progressing, activists argue that it is not too late to stop it—especially if local groups escalate their efforts. They emphasize that by increasing pressure, health workers and activists could not only push for the cancellation of Palantir’s FDP contract but also demand the termination of all agreements with companies complicit in Israel’s occupation. While Palantir is currently a key focus, the organizations highlighted that this campaign is just the beginning, serving as a starting point for broader action.

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.