Dominic Cummings is part of Sage

[pontypridd]

The mystery scientific advisory body

[MaxNormal]

He's the chief advisor to the prime minister. Of course he's one of the 23 attendees.

SAGE stands for Scientific Advidory Group for Emergencies.
Cummings has a history degree. I'm sure his input has been most valuable

[MaxNormal]

istherelifeafter40 unfortunately yes.
He's personally loathsome though so its handy having his hand up the arse of the big jovial buffoon.

[PerkingFaintly]

Just to make us all feel better, he's taking along Ben Warner, whose brother Marc runs an AI company called Faculty.

Faculty, along with Peter Thiel's company Palantir, and NHSX, are sucking in NHS patient data and potentially phone location data.

This is being permitted with a view to creating a database for tracking people potentially to allow contact-tracing.

However this model of having a centralised database tracking the movements of every member of the population with a smartphone is highly controversial. Apple and Google are developing a much less intrusive model, which doesn't involve either a government or a private company having a full database of all this information about the population.

Coronavirus: Apple and Google team up to contact trace Covid-19
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52246319

To make things even more fun, some of the people and companies involved are better known for less benign uses of data. Cummings is still in contempt of Parliament for refusing to appear in front of the committee on Fake News, and he (and reportedly Ben Warner) worked for the Vote Leave campaign which employed Cambridge Analytica. (Cambridge Analytica processed illicitly harvested Facebook data, and used bankruptcy to attempt to escape investigation into this.)

Palantir is using Foundry for the database, the same platform that it uses to do intelligence work for governments. So presumably there's the potential to do fairly easy cross-referencing after Covid is over, should the tracking database come in useful for... anything else.

[PerkingFaintly]

UK government using confidential patient data in coronavirus response
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk-government-using-confidential-patient-data-in-coronavirus-response

While such data will be anonymised, it remains sensitive and confidential, and its use on a centralised new government database is likely to raise questions among privacy experts. A Whitehall source said they were alarmed at the “unprecedented” amounts of confidential health information being swept up in the project, which they said was progressing at alarming speed and with insufficient regard for privacy, ethics or data protection.
[...]
The involvement of private sector data scientists at the heart of the government’s Covid-19 response stems in part from a Downing Street “summit” on 11 March attended by executives from dozens of tech firms, chaired by the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, an enthusiast of artificial intelligence and computer modelling.

[PerkingFaintly]

NHS Must Explain Role Of Surveillance Company
Palantir has Negative Reputation—Caution and Transparency Needed
www.openrightsgroup.org/press/releases/2020/nhs-must-explain-role-of-surveillance-company

Jim Killock, Executive Director of Open Rights Group said:

“Everybody’s goal must be to build trust in the national response to COVID-19.

“Palantir have a poor reputation, as engaging in activities which threaten personal privacy and may lead to other human rights abuses.

“The NHS therefore needs to be extremely cautious and transparent in its dealings with Palantir. They must explain how people’s data may be handled and protected and how they will ensure that Palantir does not acquire or abuse information.

“The last thing that we need as a nation at this time is for ill-thought out arrangements to generate a privacy backlash.”

[jasjas1973]

The Govt's line all along has been "We are following the Science"
whereas they have been following a political agenda to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and them getting the blame for over flowing wards as happened in Italy etc.

So keep CV-19 patients at home, in care homes anywhere but a hospital.

Cummings would have been the author of this, so far, successful strategy but should it go wrong, BJ can blame the Scientists!

Quite clever really.

[vera99]

He is textbook evil - without him No Brexit. Sort of twat that can talk bollocks with some superficial degree of authority and impress a lightweight like Johnson. If I was ever at a function where he was I would pour my drink over him and damn the consequences.

[DanaBarrett]

He’ll be part of the secretariat
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/80087/sage-guidance.pdf
The scientists need people like him to do the grunt work so they can do the decision making without worrying about the fine details.

[MaxNormal]

I highly doubt he dirtiest his hands with grunt work.

[jasjas1973]

The whole point of SAGE is that it gives an unbiased, apolitical & wide range of scientific views to the Govt and Civil service.

Govt has argued that they want SAGE to stay anonymous so SAGE can in deed be unbiased and for the security of committee members, appears the real reason is somewhat different.

[jasjas1973]

The scientists need people like him to do the grunt work so they can do the decision making without worrying about the fine details

That is why we have a civil service, fair enough DC advises Johnson but he doesn't need to be on SAGE to do that.

It calls into question the whole legitimacy of SAGE & explains why the UK, followed a different path to almost all other countries in jan/feb and march.

[Humphriescushion]

Flaming hell @PerkingFaintly thanks for that, going to have some reading to do tomorrow. This is so disturbing.

[Sosadandempty]

The Govt's line all along has been "We are following the Science"
whereas they have been following a political agenda to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and them getting the blame for over flowing wards as happened in Italy etc.

So keep CV-19 patients at home, in care homes anywhere but a hospital.

Cummings would have been the author of this, so far, successful strategy but should it go wrong, BJ can blame the Scientists!

Quite clever really.

[TheLastSaola]

The scientists need to know what is politically possible, in terms of logistics, economics and legislation. They need someone from the heart of government in there to inform their decisions and advice.

Similarly number 10 need someone listening in to the heart of the scientific discussions to understand how the decisions are being made and to have as full an understanding as possible.

[Sosadandempty]

Oops meant to say ^ all of the above.

They are responsible for the deaths of people who died at home without being able to go to hospital, or who died in hospital having been taken there too late. Some of those people might have died in any case, but many might not have as early intervention is key.

[Humphriescushion]

Once or twice the scientists have been comparing themselves favourably in my view with other european countries ( often not strictly true) and thus did not sit right with me. Maybe now that makes sense if cummings is behind it.

[Humphriescushion]

I did not think they made decisons according to chris whitty the other day, just provided scientific advice.

[OneFootintheRave]

@jasjas1973 has summed it up neatly.

[collateralmadanage]

Dominic 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

[C8H10N4O2]

Palantir have a poor reputation, as engaging in activities which threaten personal privacy and may lead to other human rights abuses

That isn't the half of it - Palantir's involvement in surveillance and questionable uses of private data on behalf, amongst others of the NSA are extremely disturbing. Thiel has latterly been a supporter of the Trump campaign along with the Koch Brothers (i360) and the Mercer family (Cambridge Analytica and their descendants such as Faculty).

Nor is the data genuinely anonymised - its pretty much impossible to anonymise this data fully which is why research use has generally been restricted to academic /pharma/scientific organisations without the political baggage.

[C8H10N4O2]

And no, Cummings does not belong on SAGE. SAGE is for the scientific advisors, the civil service are there to do "leg work".

Cummings' role is to take the outputs and give political advice to Johnson regarding the political fall out of recommendations.

[C8H10N4O2]

It calls into question the whole legitimacy of SAGE & explains why the UK, followed a different path to almost all other countries in jan/feb and march

Exactly but not just different - less successful.

[jasjas1973]

@Sosadandempty

Completely agree! what is happening is state sponsored murder, the NHS has the capacity to treat far more BUT the political decision is not too.

I hope these people rot in hell for what they have chosen to do, its evil.

[PerkingFaintly]

Scientists Advising The UK Government On The Coronavirus Fear Boris Johnson’s Team Is Using Them As “Human Shields”
www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/coronavirus-uk-scientists-human-shields

Members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), and other experts who advise them, have become nervous about senior ministers, including first secretary Dominic Raab and chancellor Rishi Sunak, deflecting criticism this week by saying they had been “guided by the scientific and medical advice”.
[...]
This emerging line of defence has concerned members of SAGE in recent days, with morale on the committee becoming “low” as government scientists began to suspect that ministers and Johnson’s aides were using them as “human shields” to insulate themselves from blame, a SAGE adviser told BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity.

Stressing the advisory nature of the group, they said that decisions were ultimately for ministers, a point repeated several times by Whitty at Wednesday evening’s Downing Street press conference.

Delegating decision-making to scientific experts was bad government because the ultimate decision on the UK’s overarching strategy — whether to introduce draconian lockdown measures or pursue a looser plan based on herd immunity — was inherently political, they argued.

[PerkingFaintly]

Indeed, C8H10N4O2, I know a little of Palantir of old.