US spy tech firm Palantir has weaseled its way further into the British state. This time, the nefarious surveillance technology firm has seized a contract with the Leicestershire Police force. It appears to be for its key intelligence platform. This is, of course, after the Tories awarded Palantir a contract for NHS data.
Palantir poking its fingers into policing pies
There’s not a lot of information in the contract award notice, which states only that:
This is a Contract Award Notice. A Contract has been awarded for one year with no option to extend.
Palantir Technologies UK Ltd are an awarding body who provide Police Intelligence and Investigation Platform.
So, it looks like a private company will have access and oversight of the police force’s intelligence data. What could possibly go wrong?
Obviously, that’s a rhetorical question. This is, after all – the spy tech firm of one Peter Thiel – billionaire Trump fanboy and supporter of Israel to boot:
I wonder how many people would be happy to know Palantir boss Peter Thiel is a Trump-backing oligarch, who said the #NHS ‘makes people sick’.
— Jean-Pierre 🇪🇺 #FBPA #FBPE #BrexitIsntWorking (@JPLT59) October 19, 2024
And speaking of Israel, Palantir would be the US company actively, and ardently complicit in its genocide in Gaza:
Palantir provides the targeting algorithm Israel uses to choose when and where to arrest or kill academics, poets, doctors, medics, etc. But I’m sure they won’t recycle that to choose which Britons are arrested or killed here.
— Kathleen Tyson (@Kathleen_Tyson_) October 18, 2024
Of course, it has been a key organ of Israel’s Apartheid regime for some years now. In 2017, Israeli outlet Haaretz highlighted how the firm had facilitated Israel’s profiling and targeting of Palestinians as terrorists. Now, a UK police force is engaging this same murderous genocide cheerleading corporation for its intelligence apparatus too.
‘Predictive policing’, Palestine, and protests
Notably, the contract is under the East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU). And naturally, it’s all about “countering terrorism and extremism”. Nothing to see here then.
Of course, this is all as the British state tries to silence, criminalize, and bang up activists and journalists speaking out and standing up against Israel’s genocide.
For now, it’s just this one police force, but one person on X wondered if it’s a sign of more to come:
Leicester Police is the contracting authority. Not that large at £880k, software only.
Probably chosen as a pilot for potential for National roll out.— Glenn 🇪🇺🇲🇦🇪🇸 #NoToTheLabConDuopoly (@Gl3nny5705) October 19, 2024
After all, it would suit the genocidaires in government quite nicely. It was the Labour government that signed off on terror charges against Palestine Action co-founder Richard Barnard. It was under Labour that the state have targeted Sarah Wilkinson, Richard Medhurst, and Asa Winstanley for exposing its complicity – and active participation in Israel’s relentless abhorrent war crimes.
Not to mention also that Palantir has just a bit of experience doing this already. That is, it was part of a campaign to smear and discredit journalists like Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald. What’s more, the company has origins in CIA funding, and holds multiple contracts for military intelligence organisations like CIA, FBI, NSA, among others:
Palantir a company set up with CIA funding and that provides services that enable Israeli military war crimes has been awarded UK ‘police intelligence’ contract. Nothing to worry about. https://t.co/tkCj5eGdpy
— Tony Roberts (@phat_controller) October 19, 2024
It’s also not as if this is Palantir’s first rodeo when it comes to police contracts either. Crucially, it has provided predictive policing services to US, and Danish police forces, US Homeland Security. The London Met Police has even hosted a trial, because of course it has!
Obviously, it wasn’t the government that directly handed Palantir this particular contract. However, it is happening under its watch:
UK been sold off to the worst of vulture capitalism by Tories AND Labour.
— Paul B | 💚💙 Reform democratic system of UK (@Paul_Briley) October 18, 2024
It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the £4m bung from offshore hedge fund Quadrature – with significant shares in Palantir:
Quadrature Capital who bunged Starmer 4 million quid have a large stock holding in Palantir
— Cadmus (@Geraint_1966) October 19, 2024
Access to UK public sector data via the NHS
Of course, this is also the same company that as Good Law Project director Jo Maugham pointed out, has sunk its claws into the NHS. That is, it has access to NHS patient data thanks to a contract the previous Tory government handed it in November 2023, in a shady done-deal:
Palantir, granted the huge NHS data contract in dubious circumstances, is now also providing police intelligence services. We are not aware this has been reported. https://t.co/8DlQfCiaMY
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) October 18, 2024
What’s more, Maugham separately highlighted how the firm hired a PR company to smear the Good Law Project too:
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? https://t.co/s127grP1nt
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) October 18, 2024
Needless to say, private outsourcing companies should have no business near any of the UK’s public sector data infrastructure, period.
A surveillance tech firm abetting a genocide and with a murky history of aiding repressive state action against people holding governments to account now has its grubby mitts over an arm of the UK state’s oppression. It’s especially alarming for anyone standing up against the Labour government blatantly in bed with Israel.
Feature image via Youtube- Leicestershire Police/ the Canary
