Scotland Yard is using Palantir’s AI to spy on its own cops: report
The Metropolitan Police has quietly deployed artificial intelligence tools from the controversial US tech firm Palantir to monitor its own officers for signs of potential misconduct, the Guardian reports.
In a time-limited pilot program, the force is using Palantir’s AI to analyze internal data, including sickness records, absences from duty, and overtime patterns, to flag correlations with ‘failings in standards, culture, and behaviour’.
The Metropolitan Police, which employs around 46,000 officers and staff and is the United Kingdom’s largest law enforcement agency, confirmed the use of the technology after previously declining to comment on its relationship with Palantir.
The initiative comes amid ongoing efforts to rebuild public trust in the Met following high-profile scandals, including the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens, which exposed serious vetting failures, as well as revelations of tolerated misogynistic and discriminatory behavior within the ranks.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson to the Guardian that the the pilot as part of a wider effort to drive up standards and improve the Met’s culture.
“There is evidence to suggest a correlation between significant levels of sickness, increased absences or unusually high overtime, and failings in standards, culture and behaviour,” the spokesperson said.
Crucially, the AI identifies patterns but does not make final decisions; human officers review flagged cases and determine any actions related to performance, standards, or misconduct.
Controversy around Palantir
Palantir, founded by billionaire Peter Thiel and known for its powerful data-integration platforms originally developed for counterterrorism and intelligence applications, has expanded significantly into public-sector contracts in the UK.
These include deals with the National Health Service and the Ministry of Defence. The company expressed pride in its role, with a spokesperson stating:
“We are proud that our software is being used to deliver better public services in the UK. That includes improving police operations, delivering more NHS operations, and helping Royal Navy ships to stay at sea for longer.”
However, the application of such technology to internal staff monitoring has drawn sharp criticism.
The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, condemned the approach as automated suspicion.
“Officers must not be subjected to opaque or untested tools that risk misinterpreting unsustainable workload pressures, sickness or overtime as indicators of wrongdoing,” a Federation spokesperson said.
The group added that any algorithmic profiling system must be treated with extreme caution, given the intense scrutiny already faced by police officers.
