Decision made to grant US tech firm ‘unlimited access’ to data in project to build integrated platform, according to reports

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MPs have warned that an NHS decision to grant Palantir access to identifiable patient information in its plan to use AI to improve the health service is “dangerous” and will fuel public fears that data privacy is not being prioritised.

NHS England has allowed staff from the US tech firm and other contractors to access patient data before it has been pseudonymised, despite internal fears of a “risk of loss of public confidence”, the Financial Times reported.

More than 200,000 have signed petitions urging the government to break contracts amid concerns about the company’s ‘supervillain’ manifesto

More than 200,000 people have called on ministers to break contracts with Palantir in an apparent groundswell of public concern about the US tech company’s role in the NHS, police, military and councils.

Two petitions have attracted 229,000 signatures, one calling for the government to end all public contracts with the company, the software of which is used by Donald Trump’s ICE immigration enforcement programme and the Israeli military, and another urging the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to cancel its £330m patient data contract with the NHS.

Eurail, which sells passes, says data being ‘offered for sale on dark web’ after December breach affecting 300,000 people

Holidaymakers across Europe are facing the stress and expense of getting new passports after their personal data was posted on the dark web after a hack of the Interrail company Eurail.

Personal data, including passport numbers, names, phone numbers, email and home addresses and dates of birth of more than 300,000 European travellers was accessed in December. But this week Eurail revealed to customers that “data copied during the security incident has been offered for sale on the dark web and a sample dataset has been published on Telegram”.

Meta paused work with Sama last month after allegations about staff viewing private scenes filmed by smart glasses

More than 1,000 low-paid workers in Kenya have been abruptly sacked by an outsourcing company contracted by Meta, in what activists said was a shocking move exposing the precariousness of tech jobs in the global south.

Sama, a company based in Nairobi to which Meta outsourced content moderation and AI training work, announced on Thursday that the workers were being laid off after Meta terminated a contract.

Spy-tech company and founder Peter Thiel should ‘have their hands ripped off our NHS’, say MPs

MPs have queued up to demand the government scraps its £330m NHS contract with the spy-tech company Palantir, calling it “dreadful” and “shameful” in a debate on Thursday, after which the government said it was “no fan” of the US company’s politics.

Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs led the calls for Palantir, which also works for Donald Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown and the Israeli military, to be removed as a supplier to the NHS federated data platform (FDP), with one Labour backbencher, Samantha Niblett, questioning whether it could be “trusted as a custodian of the intimate health records of tens of millions of British citizens”.