PA
A series of leaked emails suggest a major tech company is hiring influencers to attack Good Law Project on social media.
According to Jo Maugham, who founded the not-for-profit law firm, people with considerable social clout are being offered cash incentives to post tweets and videos attacking the charity.
It is believed that the source of the correspondence is Topham Guerin which is working on behalf of Palantir, although influencers are being told to keep the source of the money “confidential”.
Good Law Project has been raising concerns about the £330 million deal between Palantir and the Government to process millions of NHS patient records.
The company’s founder, Peter Thiel, has supported Donald Trump and has said that the NHS “makes people sick”.
And Palantir has worked with the CIA and helped the US Immigration Enforcement agency implement Trump’s punitive deportation policies back in 2017.
MPs have vowed to press health secretary Victoria Atkins on the new NHS data platform, with Steve Brine, chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee, leading the charge.
Dr Latifa Patel, representative body chair at the British Medical Association, branded the decision to award the contract to “a large US-based multinational” as “deeply worrying”.
She said: “This contract is valued at an eye-watering amount – money which is desperately needed for direct care to help patients right now, and other health and social care services which remain in such crisis, not to mention the ongoing workforce shortages.
“Going forward, we cannot, and must not, allow patient data to be exploited. We need to know just how confidential patient data will be used within this data platform and the extent of the role that Palantir, which has commercial interest in this decision, will play.”
Good Law Project has announced that they are launching legal action – working with a boutique law firm specialising in digital rights – in relation to what they believe to be a lack of safeguards in the way NHS England uses patient data.
They are looking to get firm limits on what can be shared put in place, including within Palantir’s Federated Data Platform as it is fully implemented.
You can support Good Law Project by contributing to its crowdfunder here.
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