A Historiography of Amnesia: Beyond Data, Big Tech and the (Re)Turn to Human Rights.

This article critically examines Elizabeth Renieris' book *Beyond Data*, which argues that contemporary technology governance is overly focused on data rather than on people, and calls for a return to the original human rights-based foundations of privacy and data protection. Renieris critiques current data protection laws and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) as insufficient and often co-opted by Big Tech firms, advocating instead for a normative framework grounded in human rights as articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The article highlights that Renieris' approach relies on a "historiography of amnesia," which idealizes a supposedly pure, apolitical human rights past while overlooking decades of critical scholarship showing human rights as historically contingent, politically contested, and intertwined with neoliberalism, technocracy, and datafication. It concludes that a more nuanced understanding of human rights—acknowledging their complex histories and contemporary transformations—is necessary for effectively addressing the challenges of data governance today.