Global vaccine database?

Technology creep is a particular challenge when it comes to surveillance. CCTV cameras were originally installed in London to help reduce crimes such as car theft. 

A decade or so later, police used these same cameras to identify parents who, in mornings and afternoons, momentarily double-parked their cars as they delivered or collected their children outside school. In some cases, local councils provided no car parking near the school. 

A predictably angry public outcry ensued. The police service was hauled over the coals.

A global vaccine log would require the services of an international agency with significant powers of surveillance.

Imagine the havoc that might arise if the said agency was to incrementally increase the types of data collected, in ways the public had not sanctioned.

Digital technology has a tremendous capacity to benefit human societies. Yet its pace of development far outstrips the rate at which we can build codes of ethics to control it.

This is why government committees in countries like the USA and the UK find it hard to regulate BigTech companies. These multinationals deal with technologies lawmakers can’t yet understand.

In the 1980s, work began to develop codes of ethics to guide the progress of genetic engineering. Similar codes for digital technology - covering AI, machine learning, cognitive computing and more - are lagging far behind.

All too often, BigTech measures itself against an ultra-pragmatic philosophy, which says, “If a thing can be done, it should be done - and now.”

Governance and appeals

The development of global infrastructure necessitates building entirely new transnational bureaucracies to administer it. 

These administrative bodies need to establish links with security agencies and international policing bodies. In the case of a vaccine database, new international courts would be required, to hear appeals against the misuse of data or institutional overreach.

Administrative agencies then need to answer to increasingly globalised lawmaking bodies.