‘Never Speak About It’: Leaked Audit Reveals the UN’s Palantir Problem - PassBlue

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‘Never Speak About It’: Leaked Audit Reveals the UN’s Palantir Problem - PassBlue

passblue.com

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World News@lemmy.worldEnglish · 5 days ago

‘Never Speak About It’: Leaked Audit Reveals the UN’s Palantir Problem - PassBlue

The United Nations’ World Food Programme is finalizing a five-year renewal of its contract with US data software firm Palantir despite “key privacy concerns” raised in a leaked 2025 internal audit. The audit, seen by PassBlue and FRANCE 24, reveals UN misgivings about allowing Palantir to process data for the world’s largest humanitarian supply chain.

The World Food Programme (WFP) manages one of the biggest biometric databases in the world. Its SCOPE system contains information on millions of people, many of them beneficiaries of global humanitarian aid.

To help the WFP track humanitarian aid and manage its supply-chain data, Palantir developed the Digital Operations and Transformation System (DOTS).

Some WFP personnel have expressed concern that data from the UN agency on beneficiaries could be used to train Palantir’s data systems. Some are apprehensive about partnering with a software company whose technologies have reportedly been used by US authorities in immigration enforcement and by military forces for lethal operations in the Middle East, notably in Iran and Gaza. To quote CEO Alex Karp, Palantir’s product is “used on occasion to kill people.“

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