'Very significant privacy concerns': UK hands over financial regulation data to Palantir to help tackle financial crime

• Palantir awarded three-month contract ahead of potential extension
• The US data company would have access to seriously sensitive information
• Critics have linked Palantir to ICE, Israel's military and broader human rights concerns

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a three-month trial contract worth upwards of £30,000 per week to analyze the body's data.

This would mean that Palantir would need to access highly sensitive regulatory data, including fraud, money laundering and insider trading cases, as well as bank reports, consumer complaints and personally identifiable information (PII) like emails and phone numbers.

Palantir's AI would likely be introduced to handle the huge amounts of data in order to detect patterns far faster than human analysts.

UK-Palantir contract under trial

The Guardian warns of "very significant privacy concerns" in relation to the use of AI with some of the most sensitive data there is, not to mention that the work the FCA does is also particularly sensitive – aiming to tackle drug trafficking, human trafficking and the like.

The American data company already has a growing footprint in the UK government, with over £500 million in UK public sector contracts across the NHS, policing and defense. However critics are warning that, though Palantir has started pretty small in the UK, it could infiltrate further and become deeply intertwined with UK politics.

Palantir has gained its fair share of criticism over links to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US and the Israeli military. MPs have called the company "questionable" and cited human rights concerns.

As for the proposed FCA contract, the data will continue to be stored in the UK with the FCA retaining IP rights from the insights generated. Palantir must also delete the data after the contract expires, however questions have been raised over the FCA's decision to use real data in the pilot over synthetic data.

"We ran a competitive procurement process and have strict controls in place to ensure data is protected," an FCA spokesperson added.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.