The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) has sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Alex Azar, asking for more transparency on the government's coronavirus data platform system. 

According to NBC News, the HHS gave the American private software firm Palantir Technologies a deal worth $24.9 million to spearhead the system, dubbed as the "HHS Protect, which aid the White House Coronavirus Task Force's efforts to track and reduce the virus. 

This data mining platform collects reports from all 50 states, which includes local and state governments, private medical institutions, and colleges.  

With this in mind, Rep. Joaquin Castro and his colleagues in the Hispanic Caucus sought transparency with the data mining information and analytics collected.

In their letter, they cited the "safeguards" the HHS has put in place to protect their data.

They also said that "HHS has failed to share, among other items, what data goes into the system, how it can be used, or with whom it can be shared."

As can be seen, the fifteen members of CHC are concerned on how the compiled records from the data mining services would be used.

Some feared that the gathered information will be used beyond the concerns of public health in tracking the coronavirus. 

The Daily Beast reported that Palantir, who is co-founded by Trump supporter Peter Thiel, launched the tool "HHS Protect Now" last April 10.

In the past, Palantir, which has its headquarters in Palo Alto,Calfornia, helped Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) gain confidential data mining information, which resulted in the arrest and deportation of undocumented individuals, as mentioned in Tech Crunch.

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