PUBLIC PUBLIC PUBLIC BY ANNE L. WASHINGTON and JOANNE CHEUNG

For instance, parents are not the only resi- dents burdened with the expense of municipal schools, because the whole 1 Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth population has an investment in the next generation. [...] The idea that the public interest can be singular, without conflicting priorities, sug- gests a community’s needs can be met without compromise by the whims of the wealthy, the political will of the powerful, or the overbearing influence of those who control resources. [...] The problem of representing the public interest within the datafied state parallels the concerns of early legal professionals. [...] Bhuvaneswari Raman documented how the newly digitized property records made it easier to sur- reptitiously steal land owned by those with little technical expertise.10 The government of Bengaluru gave only the affluent the benefit of the doubt in the face of incomplete or inconsistent documentation. [...] Keywords of the Datafied State Data & Society 103 When governments cede their functions to the private sector, the public must bow to the interests of businesses without accountability mechanisms.