The Nectar project offers ‘advanced data analysis’ using a wide range of sensitive personal information

A controversial US spy tech firm has landed a contract with UK police to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information.

Documents obtained by i and Liberty Investigates show Palantir Technologies has partnered with police forces in the East of England to establish a “real-time data-sharing network” that includes the personal details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses alongside suspects.

Trade union membership, sexual orientation and race are among the other types of personal information being processed.

The project has sparked alarm from campaigners who fear it will trample over Britons’ human rights and “facilitate dystopian predictive policing” and indiscriminate mass surveillance.

Numerous police forces have previously refused to confirm or deny their links with Palantir, citing risks to law enforcement and national security. However, forces in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire have recently confirmed working with the firm.

Liberty Investigates and i have learned that those projects involve processing data from more than a dozen UK police forces and will serve as a pilot for a potential national rollout of the tech giant’s data mining technology — which has reportedly been used by police forces in the US to predict future crimes.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    13 days ago

    If you work with palantir, you’re evil. I don’t care if you only asked it for a coffee, you’re evil.

  • BoycottPro@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    14 days ago

    Why pay money to a company who wants to destroy you? No government should give a dime to Peter Thiel’s Palantir. Thiel is an evil sociopath who may have murdered his boyfriend. He also wants to basically abolish government. A government giving money to Palantir is like a snake eating its own tail.

  • icegladiator@lemy.lolEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    People have been talking for years about how the UK has become increasingly authoritarian with their use of mass surveillance and restrictive speech laws but they were called right wing nutjobs…

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    So. We are sheeple after all. Because in supposedly free and democratic countries such mechanisms, which will kill freedom and democracy, are being erected with very good speed.

    Also I think the ancap idea that everyone should own a bag of killer drones might seem more attractive.

    That Ulysses’ pact of people not carrying weapons and expecting the police to defend them, it naturally doesn’t limit those who don’t take it.

    Like elites who use every weapon they can get their hands on to change the world.

    The good part is that this thing being built now, it’s unstable. It kills itself on the next stage. The solution will have to be found.