Shocking story by @PaulLewis & team. @Guardian has seen documents showing govt using Peter Thiel’s Palantir’s & NHS patient data to model ‘herd immunity’ week after policy supposedly dropped https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk-government-using-confidential-patient-data-in-coronavirus-response?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

There’s another company at heart of this story too. Meet @faculty_ai. Formerly known as ASI, the ‘secret’ data firm Dominic Cummings hired to do Vote Leave’s data modelling. There’s so much about this work that has never come out. A small fraction here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/25/vote-leave-dominic-cummings-online-guru-mystery-letter-dark-ads

This is data nirvana. Now in hands of one company owned by a Trumpian ideologue & another Cummings used in his law-breaking Vote Leave campaign. If you don’t think there is an issue with how this data is being used or where it could end up, you are very very much mistaken

It’s no exaggeration to say that this is Cambridge Analytica’s on steroids. Yes, NHS data is vital for us as a nation to fight this terrible virus but to use these 2 companies with such troubled histories with zero transparency is deeply disquieting