“Four nonprofit racial and immigrant justice groups have sued the U.S. departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services in D.C. federal court, accusing them of withholding information about the government’s use of a surveillance and data analysis platform made by Palantir to track the COVID-19 pandemic…”
“The four groups filed FOIA requests in 2020 for information about COVID-related surveillance and data analysis last year because they’re worried about HHS Protect, “a vast secretive data platform designed by controversial data software company Palantir,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”
“The EFF says that Palantir Technologies Inc. has a long history of building surveillance systems for DHS that assist it in pursuing criminal prosecutions, separating families, and conducting raids that lead to detention and deportation. The federal government in July required all hospitals to report COVID-19 infection data to HHS Protect instead of the information system operated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the EFF says…”
“Julie Mao, deputy director of Just Futures Law, said in a statement Friday that the groups know the government is collecting huge amounts of health data, and they want to understand the extent of the surveillance so the public can evaluate the efficacy of the technologies and risks they might pose in the future…” Read the full article here.
Source: Feds Face FOIA Suit Over Palantir’s COVID-19 Data Platform – By Joyce Hanson, February 19, 2021. Law360.
