Security News > 2020 > June > UK govt publishes contracts granting Amazon, Microsoft, Google and AI firms access to COVID-19 health data

UK government has published the contracts it holds with private tech firms and the NHS for the creation of a COVID-19 data store, just days after campaigners fired legal shots over a lack of transparency.

Campaign groups Foxglove and openDemocracy, which brought the action, said that the documents show the tech firms were set to build data models for commercial purposes from NHS training data before being challenged.

The contracts show that the companies involved, including Faculty and Palantir, were originally granted intellectual property rights, and were allowed to train their models and profit off their unprecedented access to NHS data.

In May, a broad-based campaign group wrote to UK health secretary Matt Hancock calling for greater openness in the government's embrace of private-sector tech companies contracted to provide a data store and dashboards as part of the NHS response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The group - including Liberty, openDemocracy, Foxglove and Privacy International - said promises of openness about the role of multiple private-sector tech firms in handling the health data of millions of UK citizens had not been fulfilled.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/uk_government_publishes_covid_19_contracts/