Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

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Show Notes

Jennifer L. Pelton, Esq.
Substack: https://substack.com/@jennesq
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-l-pelton-esq/

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About the Host

Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more than 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.

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Transcript

My guest today is Jennifer Pelton. Jennifer is an attorney and advocate for civil liberties.

After learning about data centers through information disclosed by government whistleblowers, she began studying data centers through the lens of constitutional rights, privacy, and government surveillance.

As someone who's also experienced environmental health issues, she also became interested in the environmental and public policy implications of data centers.

Jennifer is currently working towards certification as a certified information privacy professional. Jennifer, welcome to my show.

Thank you, Daniel.

It's a pleasure to speak about one of my long-time concerns with you and people who are watching your podcast or listening to your podcast, and I appreciate you giving me the time to discuss these important issues with your viewers and listeners.

So one of the things I noticed is when people use the term data center, they often think of AI. I have friends, they think it's all about AI. And look, data centers existed long before chat GBT.

They power your email, they stream stuff like the movies and YouTube you're watching, this show included. And then online banking stuff. So you see that differently.

Rather than viewing AI and data centers, the expansion being driven by AI, you argue that surveillance is playing the larger role. So I'm curious, how do you arrive at that.

So we're going to talk about that, but to start with, what is a data center for people who think it's just AI and the different kinds of data centers?

So like you said, a data center is used for streaming, it's used for cloud services, it's used to power the Internet. Data centers have essentially existed since the Internet has been around.

So they just haven't existed in the proliferation that they do now, which is partially driven by AI. And I think when it comes to surveillance, I think AI is a part of that conversation.

But a lot of people don't understand that the first hyper-scale data center, that being one of the largest data centers, being dozens of square feet, and having up to 50,000 or more servers, was actually built by Google in 2006.

So this was long before where we are now. This was two decades ago.

Because we need them for our selfies, our Instagrams all day long, and our YouTubes, and TikTok, and everything else. That's storage, right? That's a data center storage.

Right.

So how's that? We'll finish with the expansions.

So in the 2010s, we saw data centers expand. And they first came across my radar in about 2011 or 2012 from an NSA whistleblower, William Benny.

And he was talking about a project that was being built in Utah called the Utah Data Center, aka the Bumble Hive, aka a number of other different names.

And he was explaining that every phone call you make, every text message you send, every email you send, everything is being recorded in perpetuity and being kept in perpetuity forever by the government. And this is because...

And this is because just in case something happens, another 9-11, they want to be able to go back and go through all these things that they've gathered information on, so that they can build their case.

The problem with that though is that is blatantly unconstitutional, and blatantly against the Fourth Amendment by conducting massive surveillance on all people.

We'll come back to the surveillance issue. But first, I'm curious, many protesting data centers in their community, how do they know if that one is actually for the Google Internet or surveillance?

That's a question I would like to know myself. And if I were in that situation, that's something I would be asking my locality.

And I think that would be a good way to tip them off, because I think a lot of politicians and other public officials and society at large, they don't really understand this concept.

And there is a segment of the population that think, well, if we don't have data centers, we'll be like the Amish. And to a certain extent, yes, that is true. Definitely.

Instagram, their stock would go down because, sorry, you've reached one photo per day, or one photo per week, or now it's one per month.

Right.

Right.

And that's just consumerism. Ironically, it's the people storing data that probably are likely for more of the storage than their surveillance. Or we don't really know how many surveillance is what you're saying.

How much of the data center surveillance versus data storage?

Yes. And that's very concerning. A lot of the surveillance grew out of 9-11, and it hasn't been reeled back.

If anything, the surveillance has grown since then. And what we also see now is more corporate and enterprise surveillance. So we see a lot of places like Walmart or any other place you see where they have these digital price tax.

And they're essentially engaging in surveillance capitalism or...

They're doing the same thing as the government. They're tracking every product you look at, pick up, walk through the store.

And they're charging different people different amounts. Another example of this is on Uber, they have access to your battery.

And whenever your battery drainage is very low, they will actually charge you more knowing that you're desperate and you need an Uber than if your battery is at a higher percentage.

You know, speaking of data storage, I use Spotify to stream music, and they're always coming up with new things. They have videos now you can watch as you listen.

They've got a DJ who does the algorithm to see what song you like, to which what came in my head is that means Spotify has literally kept a record of every single song you've ever, ever listened to for how long, never deleting anything, every

keystroke. That's just business. How do we pick that apart, that massive amount of data storage and protest in the data centers, and we're making data from the government surveillance?

Would the government surveillance even build it in the same building, a contract with Google or a local community?

Yeah. And I think this is purposely done by design.

I think a lot of the work that the government does is actually outsourced to third parties, and this is for a number of reasons, because then the left arm doesn't know what the right arm is doing, and then you can get information from the government

through sunshine laws such as FOIA, FOIL. The states have them. They're called different things in different states sometimes.

Well, these would be secret though, secret surveillance. I don't think you could do a freedom of information act on my phone calls. Have the government been?

Well, actually, you could do a FOIA, FOIL request to the FBI and ask for your file.

I've heard of people doing this. What may come back may be very heavily redacted.

They wouldn't say, no, we don't have a file on you, because they know that's what's interesting. It's like, oh, we don't have the file. That you're going to get your file.

That's fact, almost.

Yeah, yeah. Or they may give the excuse national security, which then should set off red lights in most people's heads unless they are a terrorist. Hey, why is there a, why am I be considered a terrorist?

Why am I on a watch list? Then we've seen this throughout whoever's in power, it always changes in 80s, in the 90s, animal rights, environmental rights, Christians were considered terrorists.

No, it's not logical. If you think about it, I'm the FBI guy. Jennifer asked for her file.

If I know you're a terrorist, I wouldn't say I'm not giving you your file. That's letting you know that I know you're a terrorist. I'm watching you.

So they would say national, we can't release it because of national security reasons.

That means that I know that I'm being watched. I need to change my identity. That doesn't make logic.

That's not logical reason for what they're saying. The rejection is. But then again, they're probably not thinking as well as we are.

They're just following a policy written by some executive, right?

Right, right. Another lawyer like myself who hasn't completely gone through all of these issues, and it's not something that comes up a lot.

And unless you've applied for a job with the intelligence agencies, they probably don't have too much information on you or whatever information they do have. Again, they're going to say, well, it's a matter of national security issues.

We can't tell you that we're spying on you 24-7, even though you have never committed a misdemeanor in your life, you've never been arrested, you have an absolutely clean record, because the fact of the matter is, is they are tracking all of us.

And I joke.

Yeah, so that gets me back to, would it be the FBI has their files? But the fact is, if the government's tracking every phone call, the FBI may not even know where that data is. Some other government entity has it.

That's very true too.

So I don't know if you're familiar with the Five Eyes, but it's a pact that the United States has with four other governments. It's the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand.

What you're getting at is the local FBI, it's above their pay grade unless they go ask for it.

Yeah. And I can't remember the other one. But sometimes the spying will actually be done of Americans by other countries and vice versa.

And we'll share that information with other countries. And that's another way that our government can get around these FOIA and FOIL requests and say, well, we don't have the information. But meanwhile, MI6 has it because they've been spying on us.

It's a pact that the United States has with the UK to spy on citizens.

And they're going to need data centers for this.

Of course.

But we're not really sure if the one built, you know, that they want to build in your neighborhood, is for that, or partially for it, or if the government's building a secret one, totally someplace else. We don't know. And how could we find out?

I don't think that's something that we can find out.

If they were going to build one near me, that's definitely a question I would be asking. And even though that's something I probably would not get information to.

National security.

Yeah, it would at least put into the decision-makers' minds, because a lot of these people making these decisions, they don't know what they're doing. They're playing Russian roulette.

A lot of them are getting bribed off by these big tech companies and promise these agreements.

Could you ask for a list of clients? Like, is it Google, Apple, Walmart? And even if the government was trying to disguise themselves as a separate company, you could go, hey, what's that company?

And then you could research those companies, present that at the community meeting.

like I said, sometimes that information or that spying is outsourced, or even if not necessarily like, well, Mark is such listening to all our phone calls and everything, but the US essentially buys that information from these private companies,

or sometimes they will just willingly give it away to them. So another important whistleblower, and this is from way back in the day about 2006, his name was Mark Klein, and he works in this building on Thomas Street in New York City.

And if you've ever been there, it's a huge, tall building. There's no windows, and it just looks very bizarre. It's unlike any other building in New York because it's a skyscraper with no windows.

And it houses a lot of IT infrastructure. And there was an AT&T technician who came across this room. I can't remember the title of the room, but he was basically told kind of, oh, it's kind of like off limits or top secret, that sort of thing.

But he found out that essentially the government was sharing people's information that they were sending via phone calls, text messages, or et cetera, emails on their phone through these wireless services.

And so, even though the government is not officially listed as a business, is officially spying on us, so to speak, they essentially are vis-a-vis these telecommunication companies, because a lot of times they'll get them over this information.

Oh, that happened in, I remember, it was literally like the year 2000 or something, early Internet, and it was in Phoenix, and that happened in Quest, the local telephone company. The CEO refused. He doesn't work there.

He didn't, he lost his job. And he was very credible about it. He's like, this doesn't make sense.

I'm sticking to the Constitution. Like, as a matter of fact, he didn't even see it coming. Yeah, he didn't stand a chance.

But that's a good point. They'll just give the data from a legitimate collector, transferred over. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I can tell you first, I can tell you first, Sandless is happening. So about a decade ago, I had a jealous ex. He had a friend at the NSA, and he had his friend at the NSA retrieve all the text messages I had been sending and receiving.

And it's one thing knowing this information and then seeing it actually before your eyes, oh my gosh, this is actually real.

There are actually people out there who can have access to my data, and anyone working at the NSA can go and look at whatever pictures I'm sending or whatever I'm doing online and that sort of thing.

It's like at the airport security, anyone can look at your X-ray, see you without clothes if they wanted to.

Yeah.

So, I'm sorry, interrupted. You were saying something about anybody can look at anything they want to.

Oh, that was basically my end of my thought on that.

So controlled opposition, this is one I've only heard from you, but I like the idea because it's similar to what I do. Okay, we're assuming we're doing this because of this, but who's really behind it? What's the motivation, the politics, the money?

Okay.

Controlled opposition, you mean the people protesting data centers, don't build it in my town, that that's the controlled opposition, and there's something about it that's not honest or transparent.

Right.

And this doesn't just apply to data centers, this applies to a lot of movements, a lot of people will say this about Alex Jones.

He'll say one thing that's possibly true and accurate, and then he'll say a bunch of things that are inaccurate or act in such an unhinged way talking about frogs being gay and dressing up like a frog, and being ridiculous so that people won't take

him seriously. But essentially, controlled opposition is a strategy bad actors will use when they know there will be opposition to something.

So rather than allow for that organic opposition to grow, they will hijack it and form their own so-called opposition to control the direction of that opposition, and essentially sabotage the movement.

And with data centers, who would want to have control over it, and what's their real intention?

Well, that's something I'm looking into, and I don't have all the answers yet.

I am working on a longer forum article, but I've come across some evidence that makes me lead, or leads me to believe that the World Economic Forum is actually behind some of this controlled anti-data center.

Why would they want opposition for it at all? What's in it for them?

So they see that people are opposed to data centers, but they want to be able to have the information presented, and some of the organizations they're working with are not presenting all the facts and information about data centers.

And I see many so-called environmental groups putting out these model data center ordinances that actually harm people and they actually invite data centers in.

What's for example?

So some of the examples I've seen. So we know that in general, when it comes to a data center, typically the noise from it can be audible to the human ear up to three miles away.

And that does not include an audible noise pollution, which is weighted by DCB units or something called infrasound, which is another type of noise pollution.

So what you're saying is, let's point the attention towards the water and electricity usage and protest that, so no one notices how noisy these things are.

Right. Or they'll put in their model data center ordinance, go ahead and build the data center, but just have it a thousand feet away.

And that's not good enough when the noise pollution is going to be well within that area, or they'll put in these stipulations like, you have to tell us how much water or electricity you're using.

And that's problematic because what a lot of these organizations do is sometimes they will disclose how much water or electricity they're using, but they're not taking into account that in order to get power, you have to use water.

So, they're not adding that part into the equation.

Well, actually, that's, I think, where I think part of the metric, how much water a data center uses is a little bit confusing or misleading because if they get their electricity literally like I do, my house, I just plug something in, I'm not using

any water from my tap to do that. But the statistic that's commonly cited for how much water a data center is used is citing that. And in some cases, as you mentioned, it's true.

If I'm generating my own power at my own power station, I need water to cool it, then I'll probably use some water. But this is not separated out.

Kind of like, is it for surveillance or streaming YouTube videos, this data center, people talk about that water number and apply it towards every data center no matter where they get their power.

Right, right. And this is a way for data centers to claim they're being green or sustainable and essentially greenwash people.

So in terms of the other, yeah, greenwashing is a greenwashing exists very deep, deep and everywhere. Other environmental and community issues you mentioned are, we have mining for raw materials, which means I've got to build the thing.

Where do I get the silicon from for the servers? Right. I think labor practices.

Do you want to mention something about labor practices?

Right. So for any electronics, even for the computers or laptops that we're communicating with, it requires rare earth minerals.

And unfortunately, the only way to get a lot of these rare earth minerals is by going to developing countries using slave labor, oftentimes children, and very dangerous conditions.

And in order to get those rare earth minerals, there has to be mining done to the earth, which is destructive to the earth. And it's not even just components for electronics, but this is also applicable to solar panels, other things.

Why pick on data centers? Because that's my computer, my laptop's doing the same thing. It needs raw materials.

Right.

And I'm not going to throw away my computer or my cell phone. It's something that I do feel bad about, but what? And I'm not saying get rid of every data center, because obviously, I love the Internet.

I love researching.

That wouldn't solve the problem, by the way, either, because it would just, there have to be a way to store the data still. It's data storage, not the data centers that are actually...

Right.

They'd find, like, you get a hard drive. You just get another hard drive instead of a data center or something. Yeah.

Right.

So my issue is against the proliferation and irresponsible use. Does it really make sense to have 5,000 data centers in the United States when no other country in the world has that many?

In fact, all of Europe combined, which has a larger landmass and a larger population, they do not have anywhere near that number of data centers.

One thing I don't know the answer, but I just learned about it. I'm like, wow. A lot of us assume one data center for my pictures that I save on Instagram, maybe two, it burns down.

I need a backup in another part of the country. What I didn't know is for speed, because people have short attention spans, they build them in different locations, replicate them, and all around the world for speed.

Like if someone in the UK wanted to stream this video right now, they're not going to stream it from where you and I live.

They're going to stream it from a data center there in the UK, which means we have to replicate the whole entire Internet basically.

Right. Right. So look, the closer a data center is, the faster the information is able to get to you and be sent and vice versa.

But I still think we have to look at, okay, so why are there 5,000 data centers here? And the next country that comes close is perhaps the UK or Germany with 500.

And your hypothesis is surveillance. We'll get back to the surveillance. I believe it's not just the Netflix and the Instagrams.

It's they're collecting all our phone calls and everything we do here versus another country. Okay. And then another thing on your list of environmental and community stuff is repurposed buildings.

Tell me what you mean by that.

So a lot of times data centers aren't always built from scratch. Sometimes we'll use old warehouses, which is, I suppose, good in a sense that you're not having to rebuild from the bottom up.

But what happens is you probably know this being in the indoor air quality space.

If you have a building that is several decades old and it hasn't been tested, hasn't been upcapped, there are probably going to be mold, asbestos, lead problems, a lot of other issues.

And while those may not directly affect consumers, those are going to affect people that work on site in these buildings. And we should also be concerned about those people as well.

No, actually, a client of mine, a movie, they're making movies, a film company, camera boy movie. They do the same thing.

The union workers for the movie, the film industry had to step and go, nope, we're not putting our workers in that building, and ask for a proper asbestos lead paint, air quality, everything else assessment, because they'll do the same thing.

They go to a location, they need a big facility, maybe they're going to make a sound room out of it, or just for their people and stuff, and they'll do the same thing on the budget.

That's a good idea. It happens a lot across many other industries.

But it is something you could add to the list if you're in a community protesting data centers. Hey, before we let them use that building, let's do the proper assessment on it.

Yeah. And not just the proper assessment, but then if you find a spastic, as you know, there are very specific, stringent rules that have to be taken place. Otherwise, you disturb asbestos, you put it in the air and it can contaminate.

What usually happens, though, is it's gonna take too long and be too expensive.

They find another location. So that's actually a good, sticky point to be trying to protest data centers. And that happens to latch on to you because there's a regulated hazardous materials.

They can't get around it once you disclose it. And it won't take the time. They won't want to spend the money to look for something else.

They want to wait.

Yeah, yeah, which is one of the problems with Trump, and not just Trump, but governors across the country.

Pennsylvania has a Democrat governor, and they have a lot of these fast-track executive orders where they're waiving all these environmental reviews and rules when it comes to building these data centers.

And essentially, it's just build, baby, build. We've got to beat China. And if people…

Back to your idea, like, okay, we're only thinking about power and water, because I don't know anyone else else who would even think about, what about the asbestos, lead, paint, the worker conditions?

It seems like most people, you know, that's all they just assume it's only about water and electricity.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. And a lot of people, even when it comes to those issues, they don't understand that to get to that electricity, you have to use water. So a lot of people will say things like, well, let's use closed loop systems.

They're great. We won't have to use as much water. Well, the problem with that is closed loop systems use more electricity.

So then you're having to use more power. So are you really saving water?

Tell people real quick, what is a closed loop cooling system for the water?

So all data centers require some type of cooling because when you think about it, you have a ton of computers, servers, they get hot.

If you've ever been on your computer for a long time, doing research like I have or you play video games, you'll probably feel your computer getting hot to a certain point.

So imagine you have 50,000, hundreds of thousands of these computers, and they're doing all these intense things at once. You need a way to be able to cool it. And there are a few methods that you can go about doing this.

You can do regular refrigerant cooling, you can do direct liquid chip, or one of the trends right now is doing closed loop data centers. So they will use water and feed it around in a loop so that it will cool the machines.

But what happens with that is that requires more energy. When it comes to the construction phase, it's also more work that has to be done when it comes to the construction phase.

A lot of people don't even think of the construction phase when it comes to data centers, but that also requires water. That requires resources.

So what you're basically saying is you focus on the water, you say we have the solution, and it's true. It solves the water problem, and you don't think what new problem it might be creating, which is electrical demand.

And to add on to that, when it comes to closed loop systems, they add a lot of chemicals that are harmful, and in some countries even banned are very highly regulated.

And these chemicals contain PFAS, they can produce nitrates, they can produce all sorts of harmful chemicals that are hazardous to human health.

But if you, in my mind though, data centers aren't the only large building that use closed-loop cooling, or any of this cooling.

Right.

Why are we picking on data centers and not considering the other large industries that are building a new building, and they're going to have to cool it too. We all need, they all need air conditioning.

Right, right. I think the reason to pick on data centers is because they require so much more cooling than any other type of building, more than a mall, or...

Yeah, more than a mall. That's one thing that I'd like to see the data on, because that sounds like an assumption. I agree, it's a lot of computers are making a lot of heat.

It's still an assumption. And even if it was true, does that mean it's okay if we build something else that's not a data center, but it uses a huge amount of water, but not as much? Like, what if we build two or three of those versus one data center?

Now the other, you know, basket of eggs is using more water, and no one protests that or even thinks about it.

Right, right. Well, when it comes to these other baskets, I'm assuming you're maybe thinking of a Target or Walmart, industry, semiconductor, actually. A warehouse.

I'm thinking of semiconductor, for example, Phoenix, Arizona, theoretically not that much water.

It's in the desert. Interestingly enough, they actually have a lot of well water and they have lakes, but it's still the desert. It's 115 degrees there.

They're building two of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturing plants. That's a large facility that doesn't just need cooling.

HEPA filtration, you're silicon, you're making computer chips, it's constantly being put in an acid bath and etched and rinsed, creating toxic water, sucking the water fast. I'm speaking of industry, not the shopping mall with large buildings.

How come those aren't getting picked on and only the data centers?

Yeah, when it comes to industry, though, I would say there's a little bit more of an advantage because they actually employ more people than a data center does, and they don't come with as many environmental problems and utility problems and public

I'm smiling because I know from being an engineer at one that nobody knows what really goes on behind that.

The city will allow every permit through because the city is not an engineer. They don't know what you're doing. And as you say, you're creating 10,000 jobs.

You think you're going to shut Micron down and Bosey right now because of something they overlooked on what's going out the stack in terms of pollution. But keep it on the data centers.

The next one you say is AI data centers cannot run entirely on, I like this one because it's greenwashing. We'll run it on renewable energy. What do you think that means?

Renewable energy because energy can't be created or destroyed, right? So what does renewable mean?

It's interesting because I started thinking a little bit more about renewable energy or clean energy. And I feel like those terms are actually misnomers because it implies that it's completely renewable. It will never need to be fixed or repaired.

It's just something that will last indefinitely, and that's not true. So a lot of times when people speak about clean energy or renewable energy, they're speaking about solar panels or they're speaking about wind turbines.

And these forms of energy, okay, they're not oil or coal, but guess what? Oil and coal are used to make those technologies.

In fact, the wind turbines are notorious for largely being made of plastic and being very hard to dispose of because of all the plastic waste. And again, the lifespan on these forms of renewable energy is anywhere from a decade to a few decades.

What you're basically saying is there's a lot more to it than just, oh, we're using renewable energy, which I was once trying to understand what that term meant, even though I love the environment, I recycle, etc.

Renewable, when I looked it up on the Internet, meant the sun comes up and goes down like you say solar. That's where the term renewable is I read it came from, and that the sun is renewable, comes up and goes down every day.

It still doesn't make sense to say it's renewable though.

Right. I mean, solar panels only have a certain lifespan and also you have to think about where you're putting these data centers.

If you're putting them on the Pacific Northwest where it's very cloudy, that's probably not a good place to have solar panels.

If you're putting a data center in a place that gets very cold, like North Dakota, that's probably not a good place to have wind energy because the turbines will freeze, and so you won't get wind energy.

And a good example of this is so in January, I believe it's January 2021 in Texas. And believe it or not, Texas actually uses more renewable energy than any other states despite it being known largely for oil.

It ships its oil someplace else.

So about 40 percent of their energy comes from wind and solar and as a result of government mismanagement. Plus, it was very cold, very cloudy. So the solar energy was not really an option because it wasn't getting the energy.

And then it was so cold. So the wind turbines were freezing, so they weren't producing wind energy.

Wind. I once had both wind and solar on my property, and I found the windmill to far exceed what the solar could put out. But I feel sorry for the birds.

There's no perfect solution. Your next one is for we're on assumptions on, can you make a difference if you do this? Deleting emails or photos you say have has almost no effect on data center demand.

Tell me why.

Yeah, yeah. It just, it drives me nuts when I hear environmental organizations say that because it doesn't matter if you delete it. Okay, you got more space on your device, but the government still has it.

They're not deleting it. So it's not really making that huge of a difference.

And that comes to think of YouTube videos that I've made under different channel names. I can't even log into because I don't know my email and password anymore for them. They're still out there.

People can watch them on YouTube. Nothing gets deleted, right?

Right.

You can try this. It's like recycling when your neighbor buys two newspapers or something like that. Number four, why choosing not to use AI personally won't reduce overall AI growth and the data centers if they're related to AI growth.

Why is that?

Well, based on the research I've done, it's mostly enterprise, it's mostly the government that is using AI, and they're using it on massive scales. They're using it to power these ALPR cameras.

What's an AIPR camera?

The Automated License Play Reader. Flock is one of the most famous of them, although that's a whole other interesting topic to get into because there are actually far more nefarious companies, in my opinion, than Flock.

This reminds me of, like, that means they're tracking every car everywhere, never going to delete it. This is like being a software developer when you have a file with all the code executes, it's keeping track of everything.

Nobody ever opens as a read it, but it's saved. Yeah.

Well, they're using it to build a profile on you and to get an idea of your schedule. When are you coming? Where are you going?

With the AI algorithm, sure.

Put that into AI and we can predict where Daniel's going to drive next or walk next or travel next. And then they'll travel next and then sell it to United Airlines or Uber or somebody too. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that was why choosing not to use AI won't help because AI is going to be used in so many other places.

Yeah.

I mean, another way AI is used largely is it's being used in other countries to kill children based on a faulty algorithm.

How is that?

Don't tell me that does not require a lot of power. That requires a lot of power.

Who's getting killed?

It's being used in Gaza. Palantir has gained notoriety for their project Lavender being involved in that.

The weapons industry. I am too nice a guy to think about how to use something like that to design a better weapon, but you're right, the military technology is definitely embraced.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they have them.

There's a company, Andril, and they're making autonomous weapons, autonomous drones.

And what we've seen with our current administration is they're hiring a lot of, there's so much intertwined with Big Tech and the government, and they've taken people in Big Tech, and they've given them high positions in the military that for average

military service person, it would take them decades to reach that position. And in my view, it's, and well, it's actually not even my view. It's the government has said it itself.

It's, and I think we even see this in the wording from going from Department of Defense to Department of War, and they have even used language such as, we need to make the Department of War more lethal.

And the problem when it comes to using people as soldiers on the battlefield, is I think even the average soldier, when they come face to face with an enemy, they're still going to be a part of them psychologically. Do I act first?

Do I act proactively? What if they're not going to do anything?

Well, you also have the political feedback. If soldiers get killed, people don't like war. So you can't have American soldiers killed.

It's bad for publicity.

Right. So what the government is working on is making these weapons and making these robots that can essentially take the place of humans making those kinds of decisions or being involved in the battlefields directly at all.

But probably not at your local data center, but we're not really sure. So practical solutions when it comes to data centers being built in your community, what can I do realistically? What would you tell an individual they could do?

Well, there are simple things that you can do on your own that don't require you leaving your house, talking to anyone.

You can stop feeding the algorithm. You can stop bringing cameras, which are linked up to the whole data center and surveillance infrastructure.

There's better companies out there that are more privacy friendly and won't necessarily upload all your information to the cloud and share it with other parties and that sort of thing.

Except we mentioned though, reducing usage won't really make a huge difference. We said, we kind of said not personally using stuff, not deleting stuff, using less is not really going to make a difference.

Well, this is in terms of surveillance. Surveillance type of issues.

Practical solutions for keeping the surveillance down.

Yeah. But in terms of data center use, don't use digital currency, use cash.

That's a privacy thing to me. I don't want people to know how much, or for the government to just turn off my account, delete it, at least if I have paper bills.

Right. So that's also a surveillance issue as well. When it comes to actually fighting data centers, I think getting involved locally, because I think it's the fight can be won more easily on a local level than a national level.

Find out who your local representatives are, when are the meetings.

A lot of times they'll post what they're discussing at the meetings, if they're talking about a proposed data center project, or what should ring alarm bells off in someone's head, if they see on a subject matter discussion for a meeting is a huge

merger of land coming together. So that would signal that.

And what about at the same time, how do you know you're not being played, that you're not being part of the controlled opposition by trying to get involved in fight in a local data center?

That's why I'm a little bit of a lone wolf.

Excuse me, a lone wolf. You are a lone wolf. Well, you are doing your research deep and becoming an expert on it.

But I've reached out to many environmental and civil liberties organizations and offered my consultation for free.

And as a lawyer, I also can find the loopholes in the law. And I'm saying what you're proposing is really bad law, you're inviting these data centers in. And I either get no response, or sometimes I get kicked out of their working group, or-

They're saying that without us knowing it, some of our cities might actually be our mayor, I guess, our city council, kind of like the Super Bowl or a stadium.

We want to build a stadium. We want that team to come here. So let's start pitching it to companies who want to build here.

Without you even knowing it. And then when that's already being done, then you end up protesting it after the fact. Does that what's really happening?

Or did I just make that up?

I think part of that is what's happening. So for example, the governor of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who ran on this promise of being a steward of the environment and being very opposed to fracking.

Well, he took in millions of dollars from Silicon Valley. So that's a little bit odd. Why is he taking so much money from a whole other part of the country that has nothing to do with Pennsylvania?

And in my view, what he was doing was essentially selling the state to Silicon Valley saying, I'll take your money, and then you can build your data centers here. And sure enough, there are data centers being built left and right across Pennsylvania.

So it sounds like part of it is like with everything, take it back to the root problem. Who are you electing as public officials?

Right, right. And money in politics is a huge problem too. It's not even just a data center issue, but it's just an issue.

That's a huge issue, the money in politics.

And it sounds simpler than it is unless you examine money from who, for what.

So I think researching your politicians, even your local ones.

So I've come across some town boards, and what rings alarm bells off in my head is if I see there's a local township, and they have a commercial real estate agents on the side, and they're serving on the township, and they're going to be deciding on

a data center. How do I know during the day, they're not helping foster that deal, and so they're actually doing something that is going to benefit themselves.

That's politics and money.

So on a broader question, someone listening who isn't convinced by any conclusion yet, based on what we spoke about, what one question might, should you think they should leave with asking themselves when they think about data centers?

What's the question they should ask?

Well, I want to ask them if they have anything important to say themselves.

Because Edward Snowden remarked, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy is like saying, because you have nothing to hide or you don't care, is like saying that you don't care about free speech because you have nothing important to

You know, actually, I would argue it's not about you.

It's about the country, the Constitution. This is not an argument. I have a right to my privacy.

That is in the Constitution. It's not about what you think.

Correct.

You can tell people what you're doing every day if you want to. I don't have to. It's that simple.

Correct.

Correct. I mean, ask people, would you go to the bathroom in front of other people? I mean, you say you have nothing to hide, but.

You see what I'm saying is why they're flipping it on you, making you feel guilty when you're like, wait a minute, I don't need to defend myself.

It's in the Constitution already till we change that, right?

Yeah. And when you look at the Supreme Court cases on privacy, a lot of the rights that people have now are a result of the Supreme Court's rulings on privacy. If it were not for the Supreme Court rulings, we may not be able to use contraceptives.

We may not have interracial marriage. We may not have-

How is that even related to privacy? You got to help me. The world is too, too crazy.

In short, the Supreme Court has ruled that you have a fundamental right to privacy, and so the government doesn't have a right to know if you're using contraceptives or not, if you're in a homosexual relationship or not, or if you're in an

In the Constitution, how does it read exactly to protect that you have those rights?

So unfortunately, and this is why I think that we need to update our Constitution, and I think we also need to make it applicable to private actors so they can't get away with what they're doing.

So there is no actual amendment in the Constitution that says you have a fundamental right to privacy, but the Supreme Court has ruled that there are a penumbra, there are umbrella of amendments that essentially say that you do have this fundamental

Oh, I did not know that.

I assumed I was forgetting, I don't have the Constitution memorized.

But you do have the Fourth Amendment, which does say you have the right to be free from unlawful searches.

That's what the one I was thinking of, searches and seizures. But that, I guess, is not privacy directly. A search in that term means literally.

And the problem with that is again, it applies to the government.

So, if you're posting on X, and they want to see all the messages, private messages you're sending back and forth, you're not protected by that.

Oh, because it's a third party. They're not coming to your house. They're going to the database.

The Constitution applies to government.

It doesn't apply to private actors. And that's why I think we need to update our Constitution for modern day times.

But with the phone company, I'm trying to break this down. The phone company is private, but say the FBI listens in on your phone or hacks the phone database, I kind of got lost. I lost the connection.

The government's not tapping your phone, they're tapping the database at your phone company. That's legal, but tapping your phone directly, if they cut the wires and came in your neighborhood and hooked the wires up to your phone, that's illegal?

Is that what you're saying?

That's what the law says. I'm very creative. If you can't tell, if your viewers can't tell already.

But my argument would be, well, because the government is outsourcing some of these services, then...

Yeah, I was like saying, I hired a hitman. I didn't kill him. I hired a hitman.

It's still illegal. You can't hire someone to kill someone. That's illegal.

Yeah.

Yeah. For example, Facebook, there's a lot of evidence that Facebook got its start by the CIA. There's a venture capital firm called Incutel that was created by the CIA, and there's a lot of evidence that Facebook got a lot of information from them.

Speaking of data centers, there's a data center developer called Prometheus, and they admit that they've taken a lot of money from Incutel.

So I would make the argument, well, you have this connection to the government, you've taken money from the government, you're enshrined with the government, so...

Where it sounds conspiratorial, and like I myself didn't, I didn't believe what you were saying at first. I was like, no, that can't be true. When I think of it and I think, oh, Facebook was founded by the CIA, that's not what you mean, right?

What you mean is some college kids creatively created Facebook, and then the CIA or someone saw, oh, let's help them because we can use that too.

But let's fund it, yeah.

Not, but I mean, not like directly from the start and so blatantly, because how would they know, let's do Facebook? They don't have that kind of creativity.

Yeah, let's not have the trust base there from the CIA. Let's say they're from the In-Q-Tel, and most people won't understand that In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm connected to the CIA and essentially part of the government.

Yeah, right. So is there anything we haven't talked about, that you want to talk about now?

I could talk about the subject for hours as you probably know, but I think we addressed a lot for now. I think you put my contact information in the show notes.

They'll be in the show notes and tell people real quick about your sub stack and what you talk about or write about.

So I write a lot about data centers and civil liberties on my sub stack, which is called Outlawed by JP. And people can also reach me on BlueSky at Jen BSQ. And I prefer that platform because I've been suspended or kicked off Facebook.

Similar problems arising with Instagram. No surprise.

When you say you got kicked off, how do you know it was, you're saying it sounds like it was because the content you're posting they didn't like?

Probably because they did not like me being in data centers and I had created a group with several hundred people and had been very vocal about opposition to data centers. The exact reason, I don't know.

How do you, when you find out, how do you know? You go to log in and your password doesn't work? Or how do you know that you no longer have access?

Essentially, they sort of tell you or they'll ask you to submit all this information, which is a very weird process.

They'll ask you to submit a lot of biometric information like turning your head to the face or turning your face to the left, right.

Oh, identity. They want to verify your identity?

Yeah. .

And you refused to do so?

I did it first, and then I actually went ahead and tried to get my account back that way. And it's like you said, the account's still up, but I can't access it.

So people can watch it, but you can't log in and add anything new or control it.

Right.

And you didn't lose your password. They just created a new security check that you didn't pass.

Right.

Interesting.

Which is a little bit of an honor in my view, because I didn't think, oh, I'm not that important. No one's going to really care what I have to say. And then something like that happens.

And my response is, wow, people want to hear what I have to say. I'm important. I'm influential.

Somebody doesn't want to hear what you want to say too.

Yeah.

So it's a weird honor to be banned from some of these platforms.

But you were not exactly banned, and you weren't told you were banned. You couldn't log in because you didn't want to, or turn your head and do all the bells and whistles.

Well, I did try that, but it's pretty clear that they have banned me based on all my communications and so forth. And then shadow banning is a very real thing. And in some ways, that's even worse.

I love this word.

Yeah. Go ahead and tell people what that is. It's so clever.

Yeah.

In some ways, that's almost worse than being banned because you'll be posting things, but because of the algorithm, unless people are specifically looking at your profile or are subscribed to an RSS feed where they can get access to your profile,

You'll never know.

You'll never know like nobody else.

You'll never know unless someone tells you. And some people were saying, wow, I didn't know you were posting this and that.

This gets me thinking about free speech in general because, you know, YouTube, the Internet, your website, your substack, all the stuff is, these are awesome tools to communicate and inspire people.

But yet at the same time, if you do get shadow banned, especially, and somehow all these services, you know, no longer are you allowed to be seen on them. You have all this content out there that you see and you can post. No one's seeing it.

And you'd never know. It's in. And what would you do?

You I mean, how would anybody see what you have to say? It's it's pretty, pretty slick way of censorship, soft censorship.

Right. Which is why I like using RSS feeds. Those are real time syndicate feeds.

And there are a number of services out there.

Tell people what that is.

You can essentially subscribe to a website or to it doesn't always work for all social media, but sometimes you can plug in the URL for someone's social media websites.

So whenever they make posts, just still be able to receive them and get notices rather. And it saves you time. It can be a bit tedious doing this all at once, adding up all the information that you want in your feed.

But in a way, it does save you time, because then you can just log on and see, oh, this person posted this, this person posted this, and then you don't miss.

And the way it works, if I explain this right in layman's term, it's kind of like email. Well, you own it. You have to own the server that has the RSS feeds, your website.

Not necessarily.

I mean, that's probably better from a surveillance perspective, but there are a number of services where you can just sign up for an account and add what content you want to see and don't want to see.

Which to keep you from being shadow banned, being monitored and taken down, or they couldn't shadow ban you.

Well, it won't purposely take you down or even other people because you're subscribed to that person's content. So anytime that person posts, it'll come up into your feed. But that is an interesting question for some of these RSS feeders.

Are they using their own algorithm to bury that information at the end?

Well, it's just like an email. You send an email and you have a junk file. And Google and Apple have your own internal junk file algorithms.

And you never know, oh, you didn't get my email. I sent it. What went wrong?

That is how shadow banning could work. Even when you seem like you have a legitimate service, you never got it. How is that possible?

Jennifer, thanks so much for being on my show. I hope these conversations encourage people to question assumptions, examine the evidence, ask better questions, and continue to explore issues such as this one. Thanks again, Jennifer.

Have a great day.

Thank you, you too. And thank you for giving me the time to talk about all of these important issues.