In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton.[1]
Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types:
Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).
Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse). This is sometimes referred to as 'backfire'.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

Chaque pratique émergente porte en soi des enjeux économiques avec des dérives potentielles. L’Open data pose évidemment des questions éthiques, sous l'angle des données personnelles.
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Each emerging practice has its own economic stakes/issues with potential diversions/detours/deviations. Open data obviously raises ethical questions, from the point of view of personal data.

Sounds negative on the first glance, but is this true? I don’t know. All depends on the further context.

A detour or (British English: diversion) is a (normally temporary) route taking traffic around an area of prohibited or reduced access, such as a construction site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detour

In statistics, the standard deviation (SD, also represented by the lower case Greek letter sigma σ or the Latin letter s) is a measure that is used to quantify the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Do not forget to consider either:

Le professeur a demandé aux élèves de dériver cette fonction pour en connaître le sens de variation.
The professor asked the students to derive this function in order to find the direction of change.
http://www.wordreference.com/fren/dérives

The primary objects of study in differential calculus are the derivative of a function, related notions such as the differential, and their applications. The derivative of a function at a chosen input value describes the rate of change of the function near that input value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_calculus

Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as -ness or un-. For example, happiness and unhappy derive from the root word happy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation

La dérivation lexicale, ou encore dérivation, est un des procédés de formation des mots, au même titre que le néologisme ou l'emprunt. Elle s'inscrit au sein de la morphologie dérivationnelle (ou lexicale).
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérivation_lexicale

could work to keep the sentence tight

all emerging practices go inherently hand-in-hand with economic challenges that have the potential to go astray

French term (edited): dérives potentielles

the potential pitfall of embracing a religion that turns out to be a sect (dérive sectaire), a political party that turns out to be against democracy (dérive totalitaire), but not the potential pitfall of setting foot on to a continent that turns ot to be moving (dérive des continents)

Really torn on this one... I think a couple of the answers here are very good, but somehow they all seem to lack something. I've always found dérive a difficult word.

I have found 4 definitions of the figurative use of dérive on the Net:

Wiktionnaire 4 https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/dérive
"Mauvaise direction, mauvaise pente."

Wiktionnaire 8
"Action, en particulier politique, qui diffère de celle annoncée par ceux qui la mènent."

What strikes me about the above 2 figurative definitions is how closely they stick to the original non-figurative definition, Wiktionnaire 1, "Écart, déviation entre le cap effectivement suivi par un navire ou un aéroplane et le cap initialement fixé."

elsewhere:
"déviation progressive et incontrôlée"
"fait de s'éloigner de la normalité"

François Boye's suggestion of "unintended consequences" is close, but not pejorative enough: these must be negative consequences if they are to be considered a dérive, IMHO. As Ormiston says in his comment, the word "consequences" does not convey the idea of a "path taken".

Concerning Wiktionnaire definition 4, taking the "wrong course" made me think of a "blind alley": all the signs are that your efforts to follow this path are worthwhile and will lead somewhere. In fact, no: the results are disappointing or non-existent, and that particular avenue/alley must thus be abandoned.

NB To the objection that a blind alley doesn't lead anywhere, I must respond: "it seems to, until you realise it doesn't... and that could take a very long time"!

Philippe Etienne's "potential pitfalls" seemed great at first sight... and he may well be right when he says "it's the target that matters". I would probably choose his translation to make my life simple ... but I think "pitfalls" is more vague and all-encompassing than dérive which, according to all the definitions I find, implies a dynamic process.

I find I can't choose between my two suggestions... and suggest that the French encompasses both meanings simultaneously!