Virtually all ... assets / goods / services ... have both some positive and potential negative value. There's a component of risk.

This gets complicated when the interactions themselves are complex and indirect. I'm looking at some general notion of complexity, in terms of scale, structure, and depth, but one general notion I'm working toward is that of intermediation -- the distance, think of it as a depth in nodes -- between the observer and observed. The shallower that depth, the simpler the interaction, the less intermediated the relationship.

Node complexity also matters. Jumping through dumb pipes is one thing, passing through complex relays another. The children's game of "telephone" exemplifies this -- contrast that to simply passing a note down the chain. The note (written on paper) is physically transported. The verbal message is passed from one person to the next.

(We're ... starting to see bits of this emerge as our comms networks become more complicated, and powerful in processing capabilities.)

Back to value/liability: any given opportunity or action has some positive potential and some negative one. We tend to pursue actions with a high probability of success, and where negative consequences are either rare, or, and this is problematic: vaguely defined or difficult to articulate. That is, there's a risk, but you don't know how big that risk is. And in cases it's huge: tetraethyl lead, asbestos, tobacco, CFCs, fossil hydrocarbons.

But it takes years or decades to establish the risk. And there's a strong motivation to denying it or suppressing the message.

Data falls into that class of goods (or bads).