MPs question UK Palantir contracts after investigation reveals security concerns
UK MPs have raised concerns about the government’s contracts with Palantir after an investigation published in Switzerland highlighted allegations about the suitability and security of its products.The investigation by the Zurich-based research collective WAV and the Swiss online magazine Republik details Palantir’s efforts, over the course of seven years, to sell its products to Swiss federal agencies.Palantir is a US company that provides software to integrate and analyse data scattered across different systems, such as in the health service.It also provides artificial intelligence-enabled military targeting systems.The investigation cites an expert report, internal to the Swiss army, that assessed Palantir’s status as a US company meant there was a possibility sensitive data shared with it could be accessed by the US government and intelligence services.
British MPs have voiced concerns over the US data company in light of the report,“Palantir … is an organisation that the British government, in terms of the NHS, in terms of contracts, should stay very far away from … I think the Swiss army is right to be suspicious,” said the Labour MP Clive Lewis,The government “needs to undertake transparent due diligence” on the conduct of Palantir and other big tech companies, said Rachael Maskell, the MP for York Central,“I know there were certainly questions in the NHS about Palantir’s capabilities,It’s clearly been handed a lot of money to do the federated data platform.
I, as a politician, want to know that these companies are making ethical choices.And if they’re not – whether around weaponry, minerals or the climate – I think we as parliament should be given greater transparency around this.”The year-long investigation is based on freedom of information requests to Swiss government departments.It details how Palantir went on a seven-year “shopping trip” trying to convince Swiss authorities to use its products and was rejected at least nine times by different agencies.In response to a query from the Guardian, a Palantir spokesperson said: “There is no basis to the claim in the report by the Swiss army about potential access to sensitive data and no truth to it whatsoever.
“We run a business that is predicated on the trust of our customers, which means we also do everything possible – from contractual, procedural, to technical controls – to ensure that our customers are in full control of their data, their operations and their decisions when using Palantir software,”In 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Palantir pitched its services to Swiss health authorities – while touting its work with the NHS, which had just begun to use its tools to manage Covid-19 data,“We are already doing this in other countries, such as Great Britain, but we feel a special obligation to Switzerland and the federal chancellor,” it wrote,Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) ultimately chose not to work with Palantir in managing the pandemic,The exact reasons for this were redacted: it hired a competitor instead.
In meeting minutes obtained by the journalists, the office stated: “Problem: Communications,FOPH demands that Palantir be questioned,”At the same time, Palantir was trying to win contracts with the Swiss army,These meetings began in 2018,In 2020, it submitted a bid for the “IT system of the army’s intelligence service” and was rejected for unspecified reasons.
In 2024, it tried again.By this time, the UK’s Ministry of Defence had signed its first £75m contract with Palantir for data tools.After a meeting between Palantir’s European head and a Swiss army commander, the army commissioned an internal report to evaluate the products Palantir was offering.That report, authored by army experts, concluded that it remained unclear – based on their information about Palantir’s products – whether or not US intelligence would be able to access data shared with Palantir as it was a US company, despite Palantir’s official reassurances otherwise.The finding is “explosive”, wrote the journalists.
“Firstly, because it comes from a high-ranking body of the army and, secondly, because the Swiss Federal Department of Defence (VBS) employs certified cryptologists.”Experts in the Swiss army also found other issues with Palantir’s offerings to the military, both in terms of its cost and the fact that using Palantir’s technologies might require Palantir specialists to be permanently onsite, which could “limit the army’s ability to act in crisis situations”.The Swiss army decided not to contract Palantir.Less than a year after it commissioned the report, the UK military would sign a £750m deal with Palantir to “boost military AI and innovation”.WAV and Republik’s findings have generated debate across Europe, especially in Germany.
The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Sinan Selen, warned European security services to be cautious in any use of US software in public comments last week without naming Palantir specifically,Several German states including Bavaria, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg in recent months have chosen Palantir analysis software for their police forces or, as is the case with North Rhine-Westphalia, paved a legal path toward using it or comparable services,The MP Konstantin von Notz, an intelligence expert with the opposition Greens and former head of Germany’s parliamentary oversight committee for the secret services, has been vocal in his opposition to Palantir,In an emailed statement to the Guardian after the Swiss revelations, Von Notz underlined his view that the German interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, who has said he is reviewing whether to allow police across the country to use the US software, “must finally say goodbye to Palantir”,Von Notz welcomed the Swiss decision to do without the “highly controversial US company which has close ties to Donald Trump”.
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