LONDON — A massive grassroots campaign has erupted across Britain, with more than 44,000 individuals filing formal legal objections against the sharing of their personal medical records with the Federated Data Platform (FDP), a system powered by the controversial US technology firm Palantir.
The coordinated effort leverages rights under UK data protection laws, which compel the National Health Service (NHS) to halt the use of a patient’s data unless it can prove a “compelling reason” to continue. The backlash coincides with hundreds of thousands of citizens signing petitions to scrap the £330 million contract awarded to Palantir. Furthermore, two House of Commons select committees have urged the government to trigger a break clause in the seven-year agreement, which is scheduled to take effect in February.
Ethical Concerns and Global Controversies
The opposition to Palantir’s involvement in the NHS is deeply rooted in the company’s controversial global operations. Campaigners have heavily criticised Palantir’s data work for the Israeli military in Gaza, as well as its past and ongoing contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
David Murray, a retired IBM systems engineer who filed an objection, stated that while he supports the NHS maintaining high-quality patient data, he demands a trustworthy system. He expressed deep discomfort with Palantir’s involvement with Israeli forces in Gaza and its work with ICE in the United States. Amnesty International has also previously warned that Palantir’s ICE systems carry a high risk of contributing to rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers.
Adding to the public unease are inflammatory statements made by Palantir’s top executives. In 2023, company co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel claimed at an Oxford Union event that “the NHS makes people sick,” suggesting Britons suffer from a form of Stockholm syndrome regarding the public health service. More recently, Chief Executive Alex Karp sparked outrage when a protester asked him about Palantir’s technology being used against Palestinians. Karp reportedly replied, “Mostly terrorists.” In January 2024, Palantir also signed a strategic partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defence to supply technology for war-related missions.
Disputed Efficiency Claims
Palantir has staunchly defended its role in the NHS, claiming its software significantly improves healthcare delivery. The company boasts that hospitals using the platform have performed 117,000 additional operations, reduced discharge delays for long-stay patients by 14.3 percent, and improved the share of patients receiving cancer test results within 28 days by 5.6 percent. Louis Mosley, a Palantir executive, dismissed the mounting criticism as mere “Palantir derangement syndrome.”
However, independent watchdogs dispute these statistics. A campaign group analysing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests found that outcomes were highly uneven, with some hospital trusts actually performing fewer procedures than they did before implementing the platform.
Furthermore, a privacy watchdog recently criticised NHS England for making inaccurate disclosures regarding Palantir’s access to patient data, warning that public trust rapidly erodes when third-party data access is not transparently communicated. While both NHS England and Palantir insist that the NHS remains the sole “data controller” and that Palantir cannot use or disclose patient data for its own commercial purposes, the legal and ethical battle over the nation’s health data shows no signs of slowing down.
Reference: Al-Mayadeen