> The fact that it's being done under government contract and (arguably) within the law shouldn't immediately make it any less bad.

Of course it should, to say otherwise is absurd

what, the NHS shouldn't have _any_ subcontracting? All data must only be held by sacred NHS monks in a vault somewhere?

As long as palentir are holding the data on UK servers, to modern data security standards, and they have a contract to do so, they should be able to

no, they should not, since we already know that the contract won't stop them from using that data for other purposes and other governments. A government should act in the interest of its own citizens, first and foremost, and not pretending to believe a pinky swear by a notoriously bad actor.

Why subcontract with public money to a private for-profit enterprise whose main goal is not the public good?