- Palantir awarded a three-month contract prior to possible extension
- The American data company would have access to seriously sensitive information
- Critics have linked Palantir to ICE, Israel’s military and broader human rights issues
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a three-month trial contract worth up to £30,000 a week to analyze body data.
This would mean that Palantir would have access to highly sensitive regulatory data, including fraud, money laundering and insider trading, as well as bank reports, consumer complaints and personally identifiable information (PII) such as emails and phone numbers.
Palantir’s AI will likely be introduced to handle the massive amounts of data to discover patterns far faster than human analysts.
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UK-Palantir contract under review
The Guardian warns of “very significant privacy concerns” over the use of AI with some of the most sensitive data out there, not to mention that the work the FCA does is also particularly sensitive – aiming to tackle drug trafficking, human trafficking and the like.
The US data company already has a growing footprint in the UK government, with over £500m of UK public sector contracts across the NHS, police and defence. But critics warn that while Palantir has started small in Britain, it could infiltrate further and become deeply intertwined with British politics.
Palantir has received its fair share of criticism over ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States and the Israeli military. MPs have called the company “dubious” and cited human rights concerns.
In terms of the proposed FCA contract, the data will continue to be stored in the UK, where the FCA will retain the IP rights from the insights generated. Palantir must also delete the data after the contract expires, but questions have been raised about the FCA’s decision to use real data in the pilot over synthetic data.
“We ran a competitive procurement process and have strict controls in place to ensure data is protected,” added an FCA spokesman.
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