Palantir, a controversial US tech firm founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, has secured its first contract with a UK police force, Leicestershire Police, to provide a 'police intelligence and investigation platform,' raising ongoing concerns about data privacy...
Palantir is a controversial choice, as some community leaders, campaign groups and members of Parliament have raised concerns about giving the company access to public data. Aasiya Bora, a former Green party police and crime commissioner candidate, expressed serious concerns: “The idea that Palantir is now extending their reach into police data has to concern us. How will the data be used? Who will keep them accountable?”
... Palantir's tech is already in use in US police forces and has been accused of creating ‘racist’ feedback loops. According to experts, the technology has led to people in already over-policed neighbourhoods becoming targets for police abuse. Palantir has previously refused to comment on software it has provided to US police forces. There is no indication that this is the same tech in use at Leicestershire Police.
The company recently faced criticism over a multi-million pound NHS deal to join patient data between different NHS trusts, and was awarded several contracts during the pandemic without tender. Palantir's lack of track record in healthcare and murky links to US and UK spy agencies made it unfit to take on the job, according to campaigners. Palantir maintains that it has never had access to any identifiable medical records.
... More recently, leaked emails revealed that Palantir hired PR firm Topham Guerin to pay influencers to attack the Good Law Project, a not-for-profit campaign organisation, on social media. Good Law Project had been raising concerns about a £330m deal between Palantir and the government to process millions of NHS patient records. Jo Maugham, director at the Good Law Project, said “Palantir, in covertly paying influencers to smear us, ought to have disbarred itself from providing police intelligence services. If it is capable of dishonestly smearing its critics, why is it not capable of manufacturing intelligence about them?”
The last bit of the article (written by David Clarke I think) is pretty level-headed:-
"So should we all immediately drop what we’re doing and head to the hills?
Perhaps not just yet. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and it remains the case that senior US ‘whistleblowers’ have been making similar allegations for decades but never managed to back them up with proof, asking us instead to believe their incredible stories based on trust in their credibility.
When pressed to produce evidence for their fabulous stories they often fall back on security oaths that prevent them from telling us what they know – or threats from the ‘Men In Black’.
Elizondo, who certainly doesn’t back his claims with definitive evidence, has already been proven to be unreliable – he is on record as promising that official disclosure about the existence of UFOs was imminent way back in 2018.
In Britain, Nick Pope, who worked for the MoD’s UFO desk for three years, broke ranks in 1996 to proclaim that ‘extraterrestrial spacecraft are visiting Earth and that something should be done about it urgently’. Much like Elizondo, Pope claimed to have seen evidence in then secret files that convinced him that something bizarre, and potentially hostile, was visiting us.
But when in 2008 the MoD began to release those files, the ‘evidence’ was conspicuous by its absence.
Critics have noted that for a man who should know he has a struggle on his hands to be taken seriously, Elizondo hardly does his credibility any favours when he admits to some deeply weird beliefs that sometimes veer into the supernatural.
As well as his mention of the ominous floating green balls that he claims appeared on and off for seven years, he describes working telepathically with colleagues in so-called ‘group remote viewing’ to disturb the dreams of a terrorist thousands of miles away.
He also alludes to the idea that aliens are possibly angels or demons visiting Earth, and claims his former boss at the Defence Intelligence Agency – who he does not name – believed UFOs didn’t need further investigation as they were ‘obviously’ the work of the Devil.
Sceptic Mick West, who specialises in analysis of UFO videos, told the Mail that Elizondo’s bizarre anecdotes ‘suggests that he really believes a wide variety of unusual things that deeply involve a supernatural interpretation of reality not yet based on any verifiable facts’.
So are those who stalk the corridors of power – even in the West’s most powerful defence and intelligence agencies – just as prone as the man in the street to being gullible about flying saucers and little green men?
Without concrete proof – the ‘smoking gun’ that remains elusive in the UFO world – it seems that might well be the case.
After all, even Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who led the RAF to victory in the Battle of Britain, believed in fairies and insisted that UFOs came from Mars and Venus. It looks like we can wait a little longer before we press the ‘Invasion Earth’ panic button."