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Comment by cheeki kea on April 29, 2020 at 7:40am

23 Apr 2020

Controversial tech firm Palantir had talks with Govt on covid 19

overseas

It's been widely reported including by the Wall Street Journal and Forbes that Palantir has built an anti-Covid web app that began running at the US Centers for Disease Control in late March.

It looks very similar to the confirmed start-up in the UK of a Palantir platform called Foundry, set up to crunch anonymised data from the NHS - from hospitals, labs and so on - to predict where resources such as hospital beds will be needed.

The UK government said Palantir was not in control of the data.

"Foundry is built to protect data by design. A G-cloud data processing contract is in place. Palantir is a data processor, not a data controller, and cannot pass on or use the data for any wider purpose without the permission of NHS England," it said.

In the US, Palantir's CDC project has, according to media reports, avoided controversy because it appears not to be ingesting information that could identify individuals.

But Bloomberg reported that Palantir's pandemic pitch to governments in France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria included a tool called Gotham, best-known for helping intelligence agencies and the police track individuals.

As for palantir in NZ the company links to spy agencies the GCSB and SIS and the intelligence community, including multimillion-dollar defence contracts.

In the US, Palantir's deep links to the CIA and National Security Agency have been widely reported on.

Its systems have been used to plan immigration raids and to map family relationships in order to better target police surveillance.

Just two days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Palantir got a jump on the virus, recalling its staff from abroad ahead of most companies.

RNZ has approached Palantir for comment, and will keep trying to get more information on this from the Health Ministry.

The GCSB told RNZ it was reviewing Covid-19 contact tracing tools to identify security risks and how to resolve those.

"This work is not related in any way to the GCSB's intelligence gathering function," it said in a statement.  ~~~~~~~~> can you believe that folks. No.

Comment by cheeki kea on April 29, 2020 at 6:47am

My term - TRACK N' TRACE. Yes indeed watch out US, UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and NZ. Big brother Snoopers are out to get you and they deal with SPY AGENTS, Big ones. I saw all your countries listed in a news item I was reading today. Covid BS will pave the way for sure. Do not consent !