FCA’s Palantir deal could expose UK financial data to Trump’s US, critics fear

Key Takeaways

• The UK’s financial watchdog is being urged to prove its relationship with the US tech company Palantir will not provide the Trump administration with backdoor access to troves of sensitive citizen and commercial data.
• A US law that can oblige tech companies to disclose information to American authorities may apply to Palantir’s deal to help the Financial Conduct Authority detect crime, Martin Wrigley MP, a member of the House of Commons science and technology select committee, has warned.
• The $375bn tech company, co-founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, is expected to apply its AI systems to a wide range of the FCA’s information including case intelligence files, reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds, consumer complaints and trawls of social media posts.
• The arrangement is now at a 12-week trial stage.
• Wrigley, the Liberal Democrat MP for Newton Abbot, said: “My concern is the FCA is doing very significant investigations into sensitive data using a foreign-controlled company that could be advised to pass data across to the US government.” The deal, first reported by the Guardian in March, has already drawn concern from MPs and campaigners.