The trade-offs that EU regulators are facing mirror the tug-of-war between data privacy and public health that many governments and companies are now grappling with. Rapid access to data—wherever it is—is important to fighting the outbreak. But the loosening of data privacy measures has also been controversial. “You might as well ask yourself, has history ever shown that once the government has surveillance tools, it will maintain modesty and caution when using them?” wrote Hu Yong, a well-known critic in China and a professor at Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication.

While this tension has always been present, the sheer urgency of containing an exponentially spreading virus has thrown it into sharp relief. Many countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks, including China, South Korea, and Singapore, have utilized aggressive surveillance measures to track and isolate infected individuals. Other countries that have been trigger-shy about similar measures, like Italy and Spain, now face devastating caseloads that have overwhelmed their health-care systems. The US, traditionally one of the most privacy-preserving governments, is now buckling under the pressure: the White House has begun talks with Google and Facebook about tapping into their data on users’ movements.

Speedy access to high-quality data is important beyond just surveillance. Machine-learning forecasters who are working to predict the trajectory of the virus, for example, also rely on as much rich and accurate data as possible. Currently, one of the leading forecast labs in the US is pooling together web-browsing behavior and social-media activity to help the government ramp up its testing capacity and determine appropriate interventions. But the lab is also seeking real-time feeds of retail behavior as well as anonymized health records, which it says would greatly improve its predictions.