By Cllr Claudia Turbet-Delof, Hackney Socialist Independent

Palantir Technologies is not just another tech supplier. It is a global surveillance corporation with a documented record of enabling human rights abuses — particularly against migrant communities in the United States and through militarised security partnerships internationally. Yet the UK government is attempting to embed Palantir deep inside the NHS through the Federated Data Platform (FDP), a contract worth over £300 million.

That figure alone should concern us all. But the real cost is far higher.

This is not a technical debate about data architecture. It is a moral and political choice — and one the public has an absolute right to understand, scrutinise and reject.

What is Palantir — and why should we be concerned?

Palantir is a US-based data analytics and surveillance company founded with early backing from the CIA’s venture capital arm. Its business model is built on centralising vast quantities of data, linking records across systems, and producing intelligencetools used for policing, border control, immigration enforcement and military operations.

Most notoriously, Palantir has been a central contractor for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Under the Trump administration, its systems were used to identify, track and target undocumented migrants — linking workplaces, addresses and family members to enable raids and mass deportations. These practices disproportionately impacted Latino and Latin American communities, tearing families apart, spreading fear, and being cynically used to distract attention from wider atrocities carried out by the Trump administration.

In documented cases, people with legal status — even US passport holders — were wrongly detained or deported.

Palantir has never apologised for this role. On the contrary, the company has publicly boasted about its contribution to deportation programmes.

Its long-time CEO, Alex Karp, has repeatedly framed Palantir’s mission as helping the state ‘win’ against its enemies and has expressed extreme views that normalise severe punishment and state violence. This ideology matters, because it shapes who Palantir chooses to work with — and what it proudly defends.

Palantir also maintains close partnerships with the Israeli government and military, providing data analytics tools used in security and military operations.

This is the corporation now seeking to manage NHS data.

What would Palantir mean for the NHS?

Through the Federated Data Platform, the NHS is being encouraged to centralise and link huge volumes of sensitive patient data.

It is vital to be clear: the FDP is not compulsory. NHS trusts are not legally required to adopt it. This means there remains space for scrutiny, ethical leadership and refusal.

Health data are some of the most private information people share — including mental health records, disability information, safeguarding notes and data that can disproportionately expose migrant and racialised communities.

Entrusting this data to a surveillance corporation with Palantir’s track record risks destroying patient trust. If people fear that accessing healthcare could expose them or their families to monitoring, profiling or future enforcement, they will avoid services. This is not hypothetical — it is a well-documented consequence of linking data systems with enforcement infrastructure.

The NHS was founded on universality, confidentiality and care based on need, not status. Palantir threatens all three.

Hackney’s democratic challenge to Palantir

In Hackney, we have insisted this issue is debated openly and publicly.

On 14th October, the Health in Hackney Scrutiny Commission heard evidence from the Good Law Project, including Dr Nick Mann, on Palantir’s role in immigration enforcement and the danger it poses to civil liberties, migrant communities and public trust.

As a migrant woman of Latin American origin, it was extremely important to me that Hackney residents heard — in a public, accountable forum — about the deeply unethical practices of a corporation now seeking to manage their healthcare data.

I was proud to recommend Palantir and the Federated Data Platform as a scrutiny topic, ensuring that colleagues across the commission could hear the evidence first-hand. The Good Law Project are doing a brilliant job unpacking this complex — and often deliberately opaque — corporation, so communities can understand what is truly being proposed in their name.

Following that session, I raised a public question at Hackney’s November Full Council, seeking assurances about whether Palantir’s involvement in NHS data systems is compatible with Hackney’s Borough of Sanctuary commitments.

Those commitments are not symbolic. They require us to ensure that our council and partner institutions do not contribute — directly or indirectly — to hostile immigration practices or the criminalisation of vulnerable communities.

Palantir and UK GDPR

There is also a serious legal dimension. UK GDPR requires that health data — special category data — are processed lawfully, proportionately, transparently and only for clearly defined purposes.

Palantir’s systems are explicitly designed to enable large-scale data linking and secondary use. This raises the risk of function creep, where data collected for care are gradually repurposed for non-clinical objectives.

If patients cannot trust how their data are being used, then lawfulness and fairness are fundamentally undermined. Trust is not optional under GDPR — it is foundational.

Why many of us do not trust US control of health data

For many communities — particularly those with long histories of US intervention — this debate is not abstract.

I am a Latin American woman, and I carry living memory of what US-backed health and ‘development’ programmes have done to entire communities like mine. US-supported so-called population control programmes led to the forced or coerced sterilisation of hundreds of thousands of women across Latin America, with Peru alone accounting for over a quarter of a million.

These abuses were dressed up as healthcare and poverty reduction. They targeted Indigenous, Black and Brown working-class women, often girls as young as 16. This was not choice. It was coercion.

So when communities like mine are told not to worry about US surveillance corporations managing health data, we recognise the pattern: first data are collected,
 then people are categorised,  then the most vulnerable are targeted —  all while corporations make millions and human rights are violated.

As the first Latin American councillor elected in Hackney, I feel a profound responsibility to raise these voices — especially as UK governments now openly boast about expanding deportations, including from workplaces.

Ethics matter — especially in public health

As a Governor of Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, I know ethics sit at the heart of NHS governance. Boards are responsible not only for finances, but for moral accountability.

We must ask:

• Who controls our data?
  
  
  
• What else is it used for?
  
  
  
• Who is harmed by these systems?
  
  
  

Because the FDP is optional, NHS trusts can — and should — say no to unethical platforms.

Is it too late to fight back?

Absolutely not.

Across the country, people are organising to stop Palantir entering the NHS. In Hackney, residents are organising too — led by Hackney Keep Our NHS Public, alongside trade union members, community activists and the Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Together, they have formed the Hackney Coalition Against Palantir.

You can act today using the Good Law Project’s campaign tool: after entering your postcode, a template letter is sent directly to your MP.

You can also submit public questions, write to councillors and MPs, raise concerns at scrutiny commissions, or contact governors of your local NHS trust.

Silence allows contracts like this to pass unnoticed. Collective action stops them.

Final word

A £300 million NHS data contract with a corporation that profits from deportations, surveillance and human rights abuses should never be waved through quietly.

We have a right to say no to our data being handed to a company that makes millions from suffering.

Palantir is not inevitable. Surveillance is not neutral. Ethics are not negotiable.

We must choose care over control, dignity over data extraction, people over profit.

As a Latin American migrant woman, local resident and elected member, my position is clear: Palantir has no place in our NHS — not now, not ever.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Save_our_NHS_(49874977626).jpg Source: Save our NHS Author: Ronnie Macdonald from Chelmsford, United Kingdom, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.