Thread by @allthecitizens

@allthecitizens are investigating the £91m+ contracts awarded across UK gov to Silicon Valley data-analytics outfit Palantir. Today we take a closer look at their work with British Intelligence Agencies.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1346883469796900864

The earliest known work for the UK government by Palantir was with the intelligence and security organisation GCHQ between 2009-2011.
theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how…

Palantir met the Intelligence agency at a Visweek conference in 2008, and the government representatives returned impressed by their capabilities, writing a glowing (now leaked) confidential report.

Between 2008-09, following concerns the UK spy agency wasn’t keeping up with the growing demands monitoring emerging technologies and increased data traffic, GCHQ began a new operation - Project Tempora.
theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21…

Tempora tapped fibre-optic cables in over 200 locations to mass-collect bulk data, and became fully operational in 2011. It contained 2 main components; Mastering the Internet (MTI) and Global Telecoms Exploitation (GTE).
dcssproject.net/tempora/index.…

Using Tempora, GCHQ was reportedly able to ingest vast quantities of emails, telephone conversations, social media logs, internet histories, meta & geolocation data, allegedly surpassing the data collection capabilities of the US spy agency NSA.

Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaked docs showed Palantir was by then embedded in many of the ‘Five Eyes’ spy agencies - US, US, NZ, CAN, AUS - their software used in tailor-made ways, such as in the UK’s Tempora system.

By then GCHQ had commissioned Palantir to build the software plugin ‘Kite’. It analysed and combined vastly different types of data harvested by Tempora, feeding the results into a Palantir-made interface.
techcrunch.com/2017/02/22/pal…

This project was collaborative, much like the work Palantir undertook for the NSA on the similarly sweeping XKEYSCORE programme. It let the UK spy agency analyse ‘data stores controlled by third parties to which GCHQ was able to gain access.”

The work between Palantir and Western Intelligence Agencies is now long standing. They received early funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the CIA, with CIA engineers reportedly involved in helping them build their tools in the early stages.

Their ‘Gotham’ tool, used among US law enforcement and a sister to the ‘Foundry’ product deployed within the NHS, is thought by some to be a scaled down version of the plugins and tools that enable ‘Five Eyes’ to spy on the world.
schneier.com/blog/archives/…

Given Palantir CEO Alex Karp believes Big Tech has a ’social contract with America’ and bemoans the fact some tech companies are not interested in ‘national security’, is it of British national concern Palantir has such access to UK intelligence services?

So, a US company designs fundamental parts of UK spying agencies’ surveillance systems & whose tech is deeply embedded in UK police, NHS, MOD & Cabinet Office. But Palantir works in the shadows and their protection of the data they get from such access is far from clear.

Worried? We are.

We think that more needs to be known about Palantir’s relationship with UK government and what data sets they are able to access. And, as importantly, once they access - what can they use it for? We just don’t know.