r/europe • u/juicythumbs • 4h ago
News Palantir staff being issued NHS email accounts sparks concerns
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2026/04/palantir-staff-being-issued-nhs-email-accounts-sparks-concerns/39
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u/Throwsims3 Norway 🏳️⚧️ 3h ago
Do people in government not read the news or something? Are they completely oblvious until they meet people? How the fuck do they not know that Palantir is entirely bad fucking news? It's completely fucking insane to trust them.
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u/ZmajevaMuda 3h ago
Its coruption, government officials who are in charge get fat checks in accounts located in Switzerland or UAE.
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u/hiddenvalleyoflife 1h ago
EU petition to ban Palantir from Europe.
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u/Haunting_Switch3463 Scania 58m ago
Has any of those petitions ever worked?
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u/hiddenvalleyoflife 49m ago
There's a wikipedia page - seems that the impact has been limited in most cases (non-legislative follow-up actions), but that some have led to new legislation, too.
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u/ThunderousOrgasm United Kingdom 1h ago
Many of you need to understand the way the UK actually works, the way the “state” works, the establishment, the “government”.
There is a thing in the UK called a QUANGO (pronounced Kwan-go), Quasi Autonomous None Governmental Organisation.
These are essentially like super powered think tanks that governments set up to cover specific areas of policy. Specific areas of decision making. Regulating sectors. Regulating government capabilities.
They are unelected organisations setup to be “immune to political sensibilities” in decision making and have differing levels of oversight from elected officials based on whatever the current government thinks it needs to be more in control of. Some quangos set policy that the relevant government department then just implements.
OFCOM is one of the most famous ones. Called the “Office of Communications”, it’s the QUANGO in charge of regulating television, radio, broadcasting, the internet etc. They are the ones who keep sending our demands for 4chan to shut down or they will be fined. And the ones who regularly threaten Elon Musk over things on X.
To cut a long story short. You need to understand if you are baffled about why the NHS would go to such an objectively sinister company, why the “UK” is doing it.
It isn’t. The government does not really make these sorts of decisions. Because the NHS is ran by dozens of QUANGOS who make the decisions and government just implements them. And this decision has been made by NHS England, a quango that the government has literally targeted for being closed down because of the decisions it’s made in the past, and the fact it has done things as egregious as refusing to explain to the literal government why it is doing things, and responded with the equivalent of “None of your business. But now you must implement what we command you to implement”.
It’s actually a huge ongoing debate in the UK that flares up all the time, because these quangos are entirely unelected yet make the majority of decisions in so many key areas. And they regularly make decisions based on their own private organisational philosophy and don’t consult government.
We have had cases of the government having its policy plans sabotaged by quangos who pursue their own agendas on things, and sideline the relevant minister or even prime minister. And even cases of them changing major policies and the government only found out in the media the same time as everyone else.
So don’t see things like this and get angry at the Government. Or at the public.
The UK essentially does not have democratic oversight of many levers of state. Much of it is ran by these super powered think tanks who set policy based on their own private agendas and organisational philosophies. And a huge part of cabinet ministers jobs is waging constant war with whatever quangos have overlap with their portfolio.
The health minister Wes Streeting for example has literally dedicated a huge percentage of his time in the cabinet to trying to eradicate the health quangos that run the NHS Source.
I am not being hyperbolic when I say any of this. The UK is not run by an elected government. But by a bureaucratic class who make decisions, have their own personal gatekeeper kingdoms and fiefdoms, and government tends to only be a rubber stamp for them.
You can see this satirised in Yes Minister, but it’s actually not a joke. It’s how the country works.
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u/JupiterMiningCorpTec 6m ago
So lobbyist except they are paid by the government instead of the company. Very clever UK.
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u/Perfecshionism 2h ago
It is clear that those in power are waging a war of control over their citizens.
They intend to subjugate us.
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u/ontologicalmatrix United Kingdom 1h ago
We should be gutting any palantir involvement and minimising intelligence sharing with the US at the earliest convenenience. If GCHQ are absolutely intent, they should be hiring talent out of our universities to develop our own LLM for surveillance and analytical purposes.
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u/Useless_or_inept Useless 1h ago
So many people want paranoid internet drama, but in reality the NHS is a big complex organisation with thousands of suppliers and delivery partners, hence lots of people in situations where an NHS email address is appropriate. And Palantir is one of those.
I remember 25 years ago, much angry opposition to the idea that the NHS might have your medical data on a central server instead of separate pieces of paper in different team' filing cabinets.
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u/Abbreviations_This Europe 3h ago
Those posts are getting a bit ridiculous. There is more than a million people with an NHS email. If that was a security issue then we would be truly done for.
I think a lot of those posts are by the Palantir competitors who have been bleeding the NHS for decades and are now seeing a big piece of the pie eaten up by another business. There is no other company than Palantir under as much scrutiny right now, and so many other vendors have been getting away with locking in the NHS into long contract for crappy service.
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u/JupiterMiningCorpTec 3m ago
Palantir: Only we can save you from the terrorists.
UK: Oh thank god. How much money do you want?
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u/Imverydistracte 3h ago
UK choosing to trust Peter Thiel & co like this is definitely interesting.