The Risks of Conceptualizing Data as a Silver Bullet in the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Suggesting that wide-ranging access to personal data will fix the shortcomings in the liberal countries’ pandemic response has significant drawbacks, as Anke Obendiek analyses in her blog post. On the one hand, this idea risks playing into a corporate narrative that advocates technological responses to any social problem – despite limited success. On the other hand, it ignores that, as public actors choose to delegate their responsibilities to private tech companies, increased data access is likely to undermine accountability principles.