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West Hollywood Nurses Plan Protest Against Palantir [wehoonline.com]:

A nationwide protest against Palantir is coming to West Hollywood on Thursday, with registered nurses and community members planning to demonstrate outside Thiel Capital on Sunset Boulevard.

The “Palantir Out” protest begins at noon Aug. 27 at 9200 Sunset Blvd. Thiel Capital is the investment firm founded by Peter Thiel, who also co-founded Palantir and serves as its chairman.

The protest is organized by National Nurses United [nationalnursesunited.org], it’s one of eight demonstrations planned across the country. They said other protests are planned for Palo Alto, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Portland, Maine, Asheville, Austin and New Orleans.

The union is calling on hospitals, elected officials and the federal government to cut ties with Palantir, a data-analysis and artificial intelligence company with extensive contracts in government, defense and health care.

“No part of the country has been untouched by the terror and violence of ICE and CBP, enabled by Palantir’s technology,” NNU President Jamie Brown, a registered nurse, said in announcing the protests.

Palantir has worked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for years. The union’s latest campaign focuses in part on ELITE, short for Enhanced Leads Identification and Targeting for Enforcement, a Palantir-developed application used by ICE.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org], ELITE draws from several government databases. That includes addresses provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid. ICE can use that information to help locate people it is seeking to arrest.

Palantir disputed EFF’s characterization [palantir.com]of the program. The company said ELITE helps ICE determine the likely addresses of specific people, including those with final removal orders or serious criminal charges, rather than broadly identifying neighborhoods for mass arrests.

Palantir also said it does not operate a government-wide “master database” and that the information incorporated into ELITE comes from sources ICE is legally permitted to access. Civil-liberties organizations argue that information collected for health care and other public services should not be repurposed for immigration enforcement.

Nurses also raise hospital concerns

The union’s objections extend beyond immigration enforcement. Palantir has expanded rapidly into health care, where its software is used for nurse scheduling, staffing projections, patient-bed assignments and discharge management.

National Nurses United contends hospitals are introducing the technology without adequate regulation, transparency or input from bedside nurses. The union is particularly critical of Palantir’s work with HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital system.

HCA uses a scheduling system known as Timpani through its HCA Inspire application. The union says the system has shifted some staffing decisions away from local hospital managers and into a centralized operation in Nashville.

Palantir describes its hospital products as tools that help health systems anticipate staffing needs, assign beds and reduce administrative work. Nurses argue those systems can instead be used to justify inadequate staffing and replace clinical judgment with decisions made by software and distant administrators.

“While nurses have had to witness the fear and desperation of our patients and neighbors facing the threat of immigration raids, we have also seen hospitals start to buckle under conditions of extreme scarcity,” Brown said.

National Nurses United represents more than 225,000 registered nurses nationwide. Thursday’s West Hollywood demonstration is scheduled to begin at noon outside 9200 Sunset Blvd. 0 0 votes

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