Calls to halt UK Palantir contracts grow amid ‘lack of transparency’ over deals
Labour should halt public contracts with the US tech company Palantir, opposition politicians have said, amid growing concern at the lack of government transparency over dealings with the company and Peter Mandelson.Since 2023, Palantir has secured more than £500m in contracts with the NHS and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), while it employed Global Counsel, the lobbying firm founded by Mandelson.Emails released by the US Department of Justice show Mandelson sought help from Jeffrey Epstein to find “rich individuals” as clients.The government has for months blocked attempts by MPs and campaigners to scrutinise Palantir’s deals.Requests for information about meetings between the company’s leadership with Keir Starmer and the former prime minister Boris Johnson were among those that have been refused.
With Palantir now expanding its AI-powered technology into British policing, the government is facing calls to freeze its involvement with the Denver-based company, which was co-founded by the Donald Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel, who also had a relationship with Epstein.It also provides its military technology to the Israel Defense Forces and to Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown.On Thursday, Martin Wrigley MP, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons technology select committee, called for a parliamentary debate on “the suitability of Palantir” as a supplier to critical national infrastructure.Wrigley told the Guardian: “I would halt any further contracts with Palantir until we have a clear picture of how these [existing contracts] came about.”The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, wrote to the health secretary, Wes Streeting, urging him to break a £330m contract between Palantir and the NHS.
The deal to run a “federated data platform” has faced opposition from the British Medical Association, with some NHS trusts having raising doubts about its effectiveness.Polanski said Palantir “has absolutely no place in the NHS, looking after patients’ personal data … I understand there is a break clause in the contract this year and I would urge you not to renew the contract of such a disreputable corporation”.A spokesperson for Palantir said its “software is helping to deliver better public services in the UK.That includes delivering more NHS operations, helping Royal Navy ships to stay at sea for longer and helping the police to tackle domestic violence”.On Wednesday, Starmer announced plans to release documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US, with exemptions for material that may affect national security and international relations.
The government has previously blocked several attempts to use freedom of information laws to investigate Mandelson’s appointment and Palantir’s contracts.In June, Downing Street rejected a request from the fair tech campaign Foxglove to publish briefings to Starmer before his visit with Mandelson to a Palantir showroom in Washington DC, where they met the tech company’s chief executive, Alex Karp.Palantir signed a £241m deal with the MoD last month.The visit did not appear in the prime minister’s register of visits and Downing Street rejected an FoI request.In October, Downing Street responded to a similar request saying there were no briefings or minutes “as this was not a formal meeting”.
A government spokesperson said: “Ministers engage with a range of companies as part of their international travel and Palantir is a longstanding investor in the UK.”In July, the Foreign Office was asked by Democracy for Sale, an investigative newsletter, for information about Mandelson’s declaration of interest before his appointment as ambassador.It also wanted to see any official assessment of potential conflicts of interest.Again the government refused, on this occasion citing “prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs”.It admitted there could be “a strong public interest in understanding if any conflicts of interest may impede his work on behalf of [the government]”, but said release would undermine confidentiality which is supposed to encourage senior officials to “provide the fullest possible disclosure”.
Starmer this week told parliament Mandelson “lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein, before and during his tenure as ambassador”.The information commissioner is now investigating the Foreign Office refusal as well as another refusal by the Department of Health and Social Care in June to release copies of official reports about Palantir’s NHS federated data platform.It withheld these documents on the grounds confidentiality was needed to allow the formulation of government policy.In December the MoD refused to release a partnership agreement signed by the defence secretary, John Healey, and Palantir’s Karp in London, which preceded last month’s £241m contract with Palantir.The MoD said a release could compromise the defence of the UK and prejudice the MoD’s ability to secure value for money from contractors.
Wrigley said: “The lack of transparency in the deals with Palantir is concerning.It is essential that we have full transparency before any more back-room deals are struck.Palantir must prove its value in operational conditions, and that it isn’t just slick salesman’s promises.”
Condemnation of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot reached ‘tipping point’ after French raid, Australia’s eSafety chief says
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, says global regulatory focus on Elon Musk’s X has reached a “tipping point” after a raid of the company’s offices in France this week.The raid on Tuesday was part of an investigation that included alleged offences of complicity in the possession and organised distribution of child abuse images, violation of image rights through sexualised deepfakes, and denial of crimes against humanity.A number of other countries – including the UK and Australia – and the EU have launched investigations in the past few weeks into X after its AI chatbot, Grok, was used to mass-produce sexualised images of women and children in response to user requests.Inman Grant told Guardian Australia: “It’s nice to no longer be a soloist, and be part of a choir.“We’ve been having so many productive discussions with other regulators around the globe and researchers that are doing important work in this space,” she said
Pinterest sacks two engineers for creating software to identify fired workers
Pinterest has fired two engineers who created a software tool to identify which workers had lost their jobs in a recent round of cuts and then shared the information, according to reports.The digital pinboard business announced significant job cuts earlier this month, with the chief executive, Bill Ready, telling staff he was “doubling down on an AI-forward approach”, according to a LinkedIn post by a former employee.Pinterest, which is based in San Francisco and has an office in London, said the cuts would affect about 15% of its workforce, or about 700 people, but did not specify which teams or staff members would be affected.Two engineers at the company then wrote code to identify sacked staff.A spokesperson for Pinterest said: “Two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly
Fairphone 6 review: cheaper, repairable and longer-lasting Android
The Dutch ethical smartphone brand Fairphone is back with its six-generation Android, aiming to make its repairable phone more modern, modular, affordable and desirable, with screw-in accessories and a user-replaceable battery.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The Fairphone 6 costs £499 (€599), making it cheaper than previous models and pitting it squarely against budget champs such as the Google Pixel 9a and the Nothing Phone 3a Pro, while being repairable at home with long-term software support and a five-year warranty
French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit
Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.It said in a statement that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for “voluntary questioning” in April in their capacity as “de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino resigned as chief executive of X in July last year.The French prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firms
From ‘nerdy’ Gemini to ‘edgy’ Grok: how developers are shaping AI behaviours
Do you want an AI assistant that gushes about how it “loves humanity” or one that spews sarcasm? How about a political propagandist ready to lie? If so, ChatGPT, Grok and Qwen are at your disposal.Companies that create AI assistants, from the US to China, are increasingly wrestling with how to mould their characters, and it is no abstract debate. This month Elon Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” Grok AI caused international outrage when it pumped out millions of sexualised images. In October OpenAI retrained ChatGPT to de-escalate conversations with people in mental health distress after it appeared to encourage a 16-year-old to take his own life.Last week, the $350bn San Francisco startup Anthropic released an 84-page “constitution” for its Claude AI
UK privacy watchdog opens inquiry into X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes
Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people’s consent.The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law.It said the creation and circulation of the images on social media raised serious concerns under the UK’s data regime, such as whether “appropriate safeguards were built into Grok’s design and deployment”.The move came after French prosecutors raided the Paris headquarters of X as part of an investigation into alleged offences including the spreading of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes.X became the subject of heavy public criticism in December and January when the platform’s account for the Grok AI tool was used to mass-produce partially nudified images of girls and women
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