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Original poster

Police use controversial AI tool that looks at people’s sex lives and beliefs

40 replies

IwantToRetire · 19/06/2025 18:33

Senior MPs and privacy campaigners have expressed alarm at the deployment of Palantir’s AI-powered crime-fighting software with access to sensitive personal information

The document, obtained under freedom of information rules, shows how the Palantir system is designed to bring together dozens of existing law enforcement databases into a single computing platform to draw up detailed profiles of suspects, as well as collate information on victims of crime, witnesses, and vulnerable individuals including children.

Co-founded by the US billionaire, and Donald Trump adviser, Peter Thiel, Palantir already has contracts with the NHS and Ministry of Defence. It said its system did not amount to “predictive policing” – an ability to use AI to try to identify individuals at risk of offending – and that its policy was not to offer any such capability.

Full article https://inews.co.uk/news/police-use-controversial-ai-tool-sex-lives-beliefs-3747154

Police use controversial AI tool that looks at people’s sex lives and beliefs

Senior MPs and privacy campaigners have expressed alarm at the deployment of Palantir’s AI-powered crime-fighting software with access to sensitive personal information

https://inews.co.uk/news/police-use-controversial-ai-tool-sex-lives-beliefs-3747154

OP posts:
Morningsleepin · 20/06/2025 01:47

Ereshkigalangcleg · 20/06/2025 00:56

How is this in line with the Data Protection Act, incorporating GDPR since the 2018 version?

Indeed

GarlicMile · 20/06/2025 01:40

I stopped following this trail a few years ago, but Palantir has been badgering the UK (and presumably the rest of the world) for ages. It wants in on everything, and already is in too much. At first we refused to hand over NHS data, then agreed to 'anonymised' data - which Parliament was a bit slow to understand means little as the data can be re-matched. Now they've got tons of our info from various sources, are selling it back to us, have got many large contracts and are hungry for more. I think they're running our defence systems now, I'm not sure.

What Palantir can do is really very clever and has many useful applications. It's the fact that it's so fucking huge and multifaceted that makes it sinister. Tbh, Palantir's welcome to my beliefs, sex life, health and financial info: it's all on Mumsnet anyway! But it's not about me or any individual; it's the shadowy, ungovernable power of an organisation that reaches into all of our lives.

PuddledPeople · 20/06/2025 01:25

I would like to use a nom de plume on LinkedIn. I don’t want wankers I went to school with 20+ years ago looking up my entire life, but I also need to make the most of opportunities through connections.

AI can call me Penelope Marguerite DeLonghi-Dragon!

EmeraldRoulette · 20/06/2025 01:25

@IwantToRetire the Reichenbach Falls episode of Elementary actually covers this in a way - in your previous post you mentioned tracking various groups so government could go and arrest them or find it easier to stop them gathering in the first place.

I won't do any spoilers but there's a tech bro billionaire character who plans to harness tech to anticipate crimes being committed, thinking this makes him a good guy. It's very sinister, but even as I was watching it years ago, I thought "this is exactly where we'll end up".

I suppose governments will sell all our information to these companies. We have been run by tech for a long time. But of course, those of us who said this were told we were conspiracy theorists.

Original poster
IwantToRetire · 20/06/2025 01:24

moto748e · 20/06/2025 01:19

I fear you may well be all too right, @IwantToRetire . These guys aren't in it for the good of humanity.

I suppose in that way they really are like a Hollywood move character.

They all seem to unempathetic, more interested in their tech competitions, and squeezing life into their formulaic view of what the world is about.

With any luck the world will end up made up entirely of Musk descendants in perpetual states of ego jousting.

We will have all been eradicated for not follow their tech defined way of life.

Grin
OP posts:
moto748e · 20/06/2025 01:19

I fear you may well be all too right, @IwantToRetire . These guys aren't in it for the good of humanity.

Original poster
IwantToRetire · 20/06/2025 01:14

Ereshkigalangcleg · 20/06/2025 00:56

How is this in line with the Data Protection Act, incorporating GDPR since the 2018 version?

Exactly. I kept thinking I must have missed some sentence in the article that would explain the legitimate purpose.

Are they just downloading info of social media platforms and creating groups of people with similar outlooks or something.

So when there is a mass rising of terfs they will know where to come and arrest us.

And wonder how they are saving the data about people who have transitioned.

But agree that given the origins of the software and the way in which US today makes big brother look like a rather sweet fairy story, and dont think this has been at all thought through.

You would have thought after all the information about how Musk broke every protocal and not cross sharing info in Government departments to protect people against the state that someone would have said lets take a moment and think about this.

Sometimes, a bit like Trump himself, too many people seem to think life is like how Hollywood portrays it. Just clever tech bros tracking down the bad guys, with never a suggestion that they are the bad guys because they have no social compass. It just all about the geekery.

OP posts:
Ereshkigalangcleg · 20/06/2025 00:56

How is this in line with the Data Protection Act, incorporating GDPR since the 2018 version?

DrBlackbird · 19/06/2025 23:53

Palintir was given a ciontract for border control I believe l. It definitely works with the police and ICE in the US. Look up Alex Karp and his comments on killing people. He’s palintir’s CEO. There is nothing that they don’t want to know about us. Information is power. These men are power hungry. The other co-owner is Peter Thiel. Seems Miami has become the new Moscow where people seem to fall off balconies to their death. Sam Altman met his husband in Peter Thiel’s hot tub. It is a small cabal of men who want more money and more power via technology and data. The US is walking (racing) towards a techno authoritarian police state. It is worrying.

EmeraldRoulette · 19/06/2025 23:21

Quite confused about this

I can see that AI is going to look for all publicly available data

But why would that include health, finance, trade union records?

Doesn't that mean that those organisations are selling our data to Palantir? Though I suppose the NHS will do it 🙄

MyLov · 19/06/2025 23:04

This is really worrying. We are sleepwalking into a dystopian film at the moment. As. Technology allows for more and more surveillance we need to ensure that that rights to privacy are protected and not eroded.

Thelnebriati · 19/06/2025 21:21

Can we look at the info they hold on us?

DuesToTheDirt · 19/06/2025 21:12

Big Brother is here. Nothing we do is private. No error is forgotten. Nothing is forgiven.

Original poster
IwantToRetire · 19/06/2025 21:08

To tell you the truth I was so hot when I posted it my brain was a bit soggy, and what I couldn't grasp is why the police would need this info.

Fair enough if it is about a previous conviction, or maybe having been a witness or reported a crime.

Why do they need everything else, including social media posts.

OP posts:
DuesToTheDirt · 19/06/2025 20:59

AI can get in the bin.

I googled myself the other day, to see what information about me is online. There were a few websites listing me and a couple of other DuesToTheDirts, and then I saw one which summarises your LinkedIn profile. As I was watching, it rewrote my LinkedIn entry, followed by, "What are some common questions people ask about DuesToTheDirt?" (Obviously they don't, nobody cares.) Suggestions were something like, "Where is DuesToTheDirt working now?" "Where does DuesToTheDirt live?" and so on.

Obviously this information is already in the public domain, but I am not happy about it being rewritten in this way - or in the future collated from different websites. I think we need a way to opt out from our data being used by AI - or preferably an opt-in.

If you're on LinkedIn, try it.