Local Protests Against Data Centers, Surveillance Uniting Broad Political Spectrum
A nascent grassroots anti-Big Tech movement is emerging in a string of local protests against AI data centers and direct action against Flock surveillance cameras.
Citizens Notch a Win in New Jersey
A headline like this from Common Dreams does even my shrunken black heart a bit of good, “‘A Big F*ck You to Big Tech’: New Jersey Residents Defeat AI Data Center.”
That story pointed me to a New Jersey Patch piece with more ground-level details:
At their meeting Wednesday night, the New Brunswick City Council killed plans to build a new AI data center at 100 Jersey Avenue.
Instead, a public park will be built where the data center would have gone.
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Hundreds of people attended Wednesday night’s meeting. When Council President Manuel Castaneda announced the data center was canceled, he was met with claps from the audience, many holding signs that read “No data center!”
Alas, things didn’t go as smoothly for other protestors around the U.S.A.
Oklahoma Man Arrested For Speaking at City Council Meeting
A Claremore, Oklahoma city council meeting became a national cause célèbre when authorities overreacted, per Business Insider:
Applause broke out during an Oklahoma man’s speech at a city council meeting on Tuesday to discuss a proposed data center. A minute later, shouts of disbelief rang out across the room.
“Disgusting!” one woman shouted as Claremore Police Department officers handcuffed and escorted Darren Blanchard out of the room.
Authorities said they arrested Blanchard, whose speech exceeded the three-minute time limit, for trespassing.
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The proposed data center in Claremore, a suburban hub of Tulsa home to about 20,000 people, has divided the town. During the three-hour meeting on Tuesday evening, dozens of residents spoke both in favor and against the project.Blanchard exceeded his three minutes by about 30 seconds before police officers approached him. He gathered his notes and calmly followed the officers to the front of the hall, where town officials were sitting.
In a video of the meeting posted by the town on its YouTube channel, Blanchard appears to hand his notes to a council member. At that point, police arrested Blanchard, placing him in handcuffs. The crowd hollered in shock.
The Police put out a statement that cleared everything up:
Claremore Police officers are not responsible for enforcing the rules of city council meetings and only become involved when a city official orders someone removed from the meeting.
“A Mounds man came to Claremore and refused to comply with the rules that everyone else had no problem complying with. He was ordered removed by the City Manager, but refused to do so. Officers again told the man to leave, but he said, ‘I’m not gonna leave,’ and continued with the behaviors that caused him to be expelled. Officers were left with no choice but to arrest him.
The Claremore city council members who ordered the arrest aren’t the only local officials seemingly tilting the process in favor of big tech.
Ugly Dealings in Virginia
Politico has a great piece diving into the nitty gritty of how big tech deals with local officials.
The piece opens up by detailing the death of Prince William County supervisor Bob Weir who had “advocated regulating the supercomputing warehouses” and “championed the creation of an advisory panel to weigh in on issues of data center growth and noise.”
But in October, before an election for his successor had been held, Weir’s former colleagues on the eight-member board of supervisors held a surprise vote and disbanded that panel, undoing Weir’s legacy and gutting years of work residents had put in to mitigate the impacts of the supercomputing boom. The vote took place without a single member of the advisory group present.
…two weeks after supervisors disbanded the group, the board voted on a noise ordinance Supervisor Kenny Boddye had drafted himself, without consulting the acoustical experts under contract with the county who had worked on the advisory panel’s recommendations. Boddye’s version was notably weaker than the advisory group’s version; it increased noise limits and jettisoned a more sensitive method for measuring sound. It was approved over the objections of Jefferson and dozens of residents attending the meeting. Weir’s 70,000 former constituents still did not have a supervisor on the board representing their interests.
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The fast-growing industry helmed by the richest corporations on the planet — Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft — brings with it immense amounts of cash for land deals, local taxes and campaign contributions that can prove irresistible to local officials.Angry and Boddye have together received more than $313,600 in campaign donations since 2023 from data center developers and land owners contracted to sell to the industry, according to a POLITICO review of campaign donation disclosures filed with the state.
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The web of connections between lawmakers and the data center industry goes deeper than campaign contributions, though: One former supervisor in the county was forced to resign a few years ago after his property was included in the footprint of a proposed supercomputing campus. He had collaborated with neighbors to sell their homes to the data center developers, creating what the commonwealth attorney ruled was a conflict of interest. He later joined a data center lobbying firm, which also now employs a current member of the county school board. That body has been under fire for remaining silent as data centers are built next to schools. A former chair of the board of supervisors is an attorney representing landowners interested in selling their properties to data center developers.
The usual chicanery and screw-jobs are in full effect, but it’s not working as well as usual.
It’s worth noting that data centers are textbook cases of environmental racism.
Also that according to Benn Jordan they function as “acoustic weapons” aimed at those in the vicinity.
New Jersey and Oklahoma are not isolated incidents.
$64 Billion in Blocked or Delayed Projects
Data center resistance in Colorado and a possible New York statewide moratorium are just tip of the iceberg.
A report from Data Center Watch shows that between May 2024 and March 2025, $64 billion in data center projects were blocked or delayed across the U.S.:
$18 billion worth of data center projects were blocked, and another $46 billion of projects were delayed over the last two years in the face of opposition from residents and activist groups.
There are at least 142 activist groups across 24 states organizing to block data center construction and expansion.
Opposition to data center construction is largely motivated by local concerns. While the exact reasons opponents cite vary from location to location, some common themes are higher utility bills, water consumption, noise, impact on property value, and green space preservation.
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The backlash to data center development is bipartisan and does not follow the typical ideological fault lines of American politics. There have been projects blocked in red states and blue states, and there are both Republican and Democratic officials opposing new projects.
Heatmap has more good news for luddites and haters of progress:
At least 25 data center projects were canceled last year following local opposition in the United States, according to a review of press accounts, public records, and project announcements conducted by Heatmap Pro. Those canceled projects accounted for at least 4.7 gigawatts of electricity demand — a meaningful share of the overall data center capacity projected to come online in the coming years.
Those cancellations reflect a sharp increase over recent years, when local backlash rarely played a role in project cancellations, according to Heatmap’s review.
Microedge reports the monkey-wrenching is picking up pace:
This nation-wide (the resistance is global too) grassroots movement has got pundit tongues a-wagging, trying to explain.
What Does It All Mean?
NPR readers learned that “People are protesting AI data centers, and it’s scrambling political lines.”
Relevant bits:
In recent months, protesters in Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states have shut down proposals for new building sites. A town in Wisconsin is even trying to oust its mayor after approval of a data center there.
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“I do think this is going to be a big issue in our politics throughout this year and probably for the foreseeable future,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI, a group pushing for more AI safeguards.But the issue isn’t exactly divided by party lines.
While President Trump and his AI czar David Sacks have been outspoken about the need for more data center construction and looser regulations on artificial intelligence, other elected officials on both sides of the aisle are taking a different approach.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, recently proposed a nationwide moratorium on data center construction. On the other side, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has pushed for more regulation of AI, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has urged more caution when it comes to the technology and the companies that create it.
“There are some people that say, you know, the right policy is to just give Big Tech whatever they want, subsidize it and all this stuff, and somehow that’s going to lead us to some happy place. I reject that,” DeSantis said last month.
The New Republic sees an opportunity and highlights it in their piece titled “Data Centers Are the Enemy We’ve All Been Waiting For” and subtitled, “The startling rapidity of the bottom-up revolt against Big Tech shows people will indeed get off the sofa for the right fight.”
Choice bits:
In Wisconsin, for example, at least four communities—DeForest, Caledonia, Yorkville, and Greenleaf—have recently defeated data center proposals, either by getting local authorities to reject them or by causing so much trouble that the companies withdrew their plans. Counties and cities in Georgia have passed moratoriums on data centers.
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at least 19 Michigan communities—including Bay City and Grand Rapids—are considering banning data centers or have already done so (the latter include Howell, Saginaw, and Pontiac). The Michigan rebellion is particularly significant given that in 2024, the state promised massive tax holidays—no taxes till 2050, if they meet some extremely mild conditions—to companies willing to build data centers. That’s a big incentive for companies to site their data centers in Michigan. But local communities are not welcoming them. As town after town takes up the issue, local officials described packed community meetings and data center backlash unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.
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The political class has been slow to address this anger. But there are signs that some are finally catching up. Some gubernatorial candidates are now placing opposition to data centers at the center of their campaigns. In Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin, and elsewhere, legislators are proposing statewide moratoriums on their construction.
The Washington Post has a similar piece with some complimentary details and quotes, but I’ll use them as a source for the industry spin attempting to push back and the Trump administration response:
“Fueled by misinformation, driven by radical environmental policies, communities are missing out on the jobs, security and opportunities this technology is delivering,” said an email from Brian O. Walsh, executive director of the AI Infrastructure Coalition. The group says the projects lower electricity prices, a claim that is hotly disputed.
The White House frames the data center boom as beneficial, saying in a statement that it will lead to big investments in infrastructure and boost manufacturing. But the administration is also aware some communities oppose them.
“Communities know what’s best for them, and the Administration is clear that local infrastructure decisions remain with states and localities,” the statement said.
Gluttons for punishment Those looking for a more “balanced” take are referred to “Data Centers Are Not the Villain” from Bari Weiss’ Free Press.
Heatmap did some research last Fall looking more deeply into the phenomenon:
In August, our data intelligence platform Heatmap Pro conducted polling to figure out how Americans feel about the billions of dollars being poured into data centers for cloud computing and AI development. We found that the dislike is incredibly strong — less than half of Americans are willing to support a data center near them. The hostility crosses party lines, with Republicans nearly as likely to express disdain towards these projects as Democrats. The frustrations with these facilities are also poised to increase over generations, as data centers are most underwater with the younger cohorts, aged 18 to 49, who may be more familiar with AI.
The polling also showed that people are easily convinced to oppose data center development in their neighborhoods. Rhetoric in favor of data centers — how they contribute to tax revenue, create jobs, help the U.S. compete with China — might win some hearts and minds, but rhetoric decrying data centers consistently polled stronger than any of the supportive arguments we tested. This registered across party lines. And making matters worse for the tech sector, individuals who previously opposed renewable energy projects were more likely to be anti-data centers.
What you get in the end is a populist conflict appealing to younger people that bridges the ends of the political spectrum, connecting the left and right — and that should make developers very worried.
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On one end of the spectrum, left-aligned activists and local leaders are raging against the energy and water system strain that’ll come from the data center boom. You have folks like Blake Coe, an activist fighting data center projects in San Marcos, Texas. Coe told me he began opposing data centers after being politically awakened by a totally different issue: the Israeli government’s offensive in Gaza and alleged genocide of Palestinians there. But as he told me, he didn’t have “the clout, the money, the whatever to work on fixing a genocide.” After learning about the project in San Marcos, he concluded that the community there was something he “can fight for.”
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At the same time, activists fighting renewable energy projects from the right are also lining up to fight data centers, echoing the same frustrations voiced by environmentalists while also tarring the infrastructure as part of a broader social change imposed by Big Tech elites. Take Indiana, one of the most popular data center destinations after Virginia, where the backlash is hitting Indianapolis and rural GOP strongholds alike. Or Missouri, whose Senator Josh Hawley summed up my story here in one post in October.
Wild that people don’t like this stuff. Maybe it’s because of videos like this one from More Perfect Union that drew 3 million views or this one, or this one from the noted enemies of free enterprise at Business Insider.
The Trump Regime Attempts to Tip Toe Through the Minefield
You know things are out of hand if the Trumpers are trying to moderate their approach. Per Politico:
The Trump administration wants some of the world’s largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliability, and that the companies driving demand also carry the cost of building new infrastructure.
The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers. It could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. None of these companies immediately responded to a request for comment.
The Democratic aspiring class of 2028 presidential hopefuls can smell the coffee too.
Run Away Pritzker, Run Away Shapiro, Run Away Wes Moore!
Just a few months ago, potential 2028 presidential candidates — including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore — were bending over backward to lure data centers, with offers of lavish tax breaks and other goodies.
The projects seemed like no-brainers to many pols: They promised jobs, made building trade unions happy, took on China and pleased Silicon Valley execs.
Now those Democrats are abruptly retreating — and vowing to protect voters from the consequences of the AI revolution.
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This past week, Pritzker hit the pause button in his State of the State speech, proposing a two-year moratorium on the tax incentives.
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After residents complained about data centers in their backyards, Shapiro called for additional oversight during his budget address this month, saying: “I know Pennsylvanians have real concerns about these data centers … and so do I.”
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(Wes Moore) changed tone at his State of the State address this month, unveiling new guidelines that Maryland data centers must follow to win his support.
But it’s not just data centers inspiring local protests and backlash against Big Tech.
Just Another Ill-Fated Super Bowl Ad
Super Bowl ads are a traditional way for American companies on the edge of implosion to announce their pending doom.
At this year’s game imploding AI companies went for the brass ring, but Amazon turned out to be the one who grabbed the booby prize.
The ad was a heart-warming hit, but the backlash was immediate and significant enough to send the Ring CEO on an apology tour, via the NYT:
Jamie Siminoff, the founder and chief inventor of Ring, the ubiquitous doorbell camera, was excited for the company’s first Super Bowl television commercial. The 30-second ad presented its product helping with a task as unassailable as apple pie: finding lost dogs.
But since the ad aired, instead of a victory lap, Mr. Siminoff has been on an apology tour.
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Jamie Siminoff, the founder and chief inventor of Ring, the ubiquitous doorbell camera, was excited for the company’s first Super Bowl television commercial. The 30-second ad presented its product helping with a task as unassailable as apple pie: finding lost dogs.But since the ad aired, instead of a victory lap, Mr. Siminoff has been on an apology tour.
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Ring, which is owned by Amazon, is so ubiquitous that is has become a generic term for any doorbell camera, and users raised questions about how much Ring was monitoring them.
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Mr. Siminoff, who started Ring in his garage in Los Angeles, remains resolute that more video in the world is better. He believes that most people feel this way, too, even if they say they have misgivings.“I think there’s been a lot of cases recently where if the video had not been there, I’m not sure if the story would have been told the same or we wouldn’t have known what happened,” he said.
But he gets that people want to have some measure of control.
“That’s the balance. It’s not just like unfettered mass surveillance,” he said. “That’s not what we have with Ring. You get to choose what you want to do with your individual home.”
Amazon quickly found a scapegoat, per Variety:
Many viewers found Ring’s Search Party canine-finding ad heartwarming. Others, however, were alarmed at the surveillance implications of such a feature — and amid a growing backlash, Ring has announced that it was ending its partnership with Flock Safety, a company that enables users to share information with law enforcement agencies.
“Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. As a result, we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration,” Ring said in a statement released Thursday.
It’s weird that Amazon wants to distance itself from Flock, given how popular the service is with ICE:
The company advertises contracts with more than 6,000 police departments nationwide, providing AI-assisted video surveillance and automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems searchable across jurisdictions, according to public company disclosures.
These systems are explicitly designed for data sharing between agencies.
Federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), already access Flock-connected surveillance systems through local and state law-enforcement partners.
Investigative reporting has documented that ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, and the U.S. Secret Service have used Flock infrastructure without needing direct contracts with the company, instead relying on inter-agency data sharing agreements…
Maybe we should pay heed to the words of Flock CEO Garrett Langley, via the ACLU:
In a December email reportedly sent to all its law enforcement clients, CEO Garrett Langley claimed that attacks on Flock were attacks on law enforcement. “Let’s call this what it is,” he wrote. “Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack.” Langley then portrays Flock’s critics as motivated not by legitimate disagreement over the relative importance of different values and the role of mass surveillance in a brutal mass deportation effort, but as some kind of nihilists who wish to destroy society:
“The attacks aren’t new. You’ve been dealing with this for forever, and we’ve been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they’re producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.”
Langley also told police departments that “activist groups” are also “trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us.” In a democratic society where sovereignty rests with the people, transparency into what the government is doing is vital. In an era where powerful new technologies promise to give the government expansive new powers never before seen in human history, transparency becomes even more urgent.
Last week, responding to critical coverage of the release of data on millions of police surveillance targets by reporters at 404Media, Flock charged that behind the criticism lay “activists trying to let murderers go free.”
Too bad the good word didn’t get out before some no-goodniks and outside agitators got carried away with local protests and such, per this Blood in the Machine piece headlined, “Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras”.
Last week, in La Mesa, a small city just east of San Diego, California, observers happened upon a pair of destroyed Flock cameras. One had been smashed and left on the median, the other had key parts removed. The destruction was obviously intentional, and appears perhaps even staged to leave a message: It came just weeks after the city decided, in the face of public protest, to continue its contracts with the surveillance company.
Flock cameras are typically mounted on 8 to 12 foot poles and powered by a solar panel. The smashed remains of all of the above in La Mesa are the latest examples of a widening anti-Flock backlash. In recent months, people have been smashing and dismantling the surveillance devices, in incidents reported in at least five states, from coast to coast.
The whole article is highly-recommended for those needing hater-aide injected in their veins.
Be sure to avoid looking at this this map of Flock cameras around the U.S. courtesy of DeFlock.me and Banish Big Brother.
Definitely don’t watch this video by Benn Jordan and 404 Media titled “This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers” and also avoid Jordan’s video “We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds.”
Stay safe out there.