Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Gerry McGovern

In a city called The Dalles, in Oregon, USA, local people were worried that Google’s water use was soaring. As is so often the case, the city officials, who had given Google hundreds of millions in tax breaks, had no intention of letting anyone know how much water Google was using. It was up to a local paper, The Oregonian, to try and find out. They were forced to bring a case to court. City officials were ordered by Google to claim that Google’s use of scarce public water was a “trade secret”.

74 comments
Gerry McGovern

After more than a year in court, city officials were forced to tell their own citizens how much public water Google was using. “But most troubling in the affair,” Binoy Kampmark wrote for Scoop in 2023, “leaving aside the lamentable conduct of public officials, was the willingness of a private company to bankroll a state entity in preventing access to public records.” This is the type of surveillance capitalism top secret future that Big Tech is implementing for all of us.

Gerry McGovern

The State and Big Tech, working hand-in-hand, to suppress citizen rights. Big Tech knows everything about us. We know nothing about them. Google’s bullyboy, arrogant, untouchable, imperious tactics were not over. In 2024, David Wren writing for The Post and Courier, warned that in Dorchester County, USA, the amount of public water Google was demanding “to cool computer server farms and other equipment it plans to build is a closely guarded "trade secret."

Chookbot

@gerrymcgovern They can hide it from others outside the trade, but they can't hide it from the citizens who own the water.

MylesRyden

@marnanel @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern

I am going to guess that their competitors already have a pretty good idea of the amount of water and electricity that Google is using. They have similar set ups, so the only variable is the actual volume of data traffic (which I understand is what they are trying to hide). But surely Meta and Amazon have pretty good estimates of how much data Google is moving.

Gerry McGovern

@MylesRyden
I think that would be a very good guess. Of course, the competitors know. It's not about them. It's about keeping the public ignorant because when you dig deep into data centers, you find that they are really terrible for a local community. A community becomes a sacrifice zone for the data center.

@marnanel @anne_twain

MylesRyden

@gerrymcgovern @marnanel @anne_twain

Agreed 100%.

BigTech is also depending on the misperception on the part of the general public that Data Centers are totally benign -- just taking the computers that would be found in the average office building and putting them in a warehouse, right?

BigTech does not want the public to know the actual amount of resources that are actually being consumed by their "clean" industry.

DelRider

@anne_twain @gerrymcgovern Water rights in the US are regionally determined and can be really strange. It's not always a public resource. Some laws are even "hands tied" by agreements made a hundred, or more, years ago. Check out the documentary "Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008)" to see how corporations are trying to lay claim to "public" resources. It's really amazing the noose people will willingly put their own necks into.

Lewis Cowles

@DelRider @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern
Also, check out:

Mos Def "New World Water (1999)"

Some people have known about this for quarter of a century, and even published popular music about it.

That's not to say there is nothing to be done, but it's probably more pitchforks and molotovs at this point than polite discussion.

marnanel

@DelRider @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern I was shocked to learn that the Colorado River doesn't reach the sea any more

Bryan Beauseigneur ⎇🦀⎇

@marnanel
The 1900s called looking for you 😉. I'm not sure when but I think it's been many decades.
@DelRider @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern

バツ子(心古く言葉新し
@RustedComputing @marnanel @DelRider @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern
mmm, this is mostly the fault of meat-eaters, as 3/4 of all crops grown go to feeding livestock

california's almond boom has made the problem even worse though, as almonds are a horribly wasteful crop no one should eat ever, and city infrastructure also matters to some extent (e.g. phoenix uses the same amount of water today as it did in the 1970s, while los angeles has hardly even tried

see https://onthepublicrecord.org/ for a nice resource
@RustedComputing @marnanel @DelRider @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern
mmm, this is mostly the fault of meat-eaters, as 3/4 of all crops grown go to feeding livestock

plaws/VE[23]UWY/he-him🇨🇦🇺🇸

@DelRider @anne_twain @gerrymcgovern

Took a class on (US) water rights in grad school. Fascinating. "Riparian" generally east of ~100° W and "prior appropriation" (that's the "agreements made > 100 years ago thing") to the west. First Nations areas have different rules as does Hawai'i.

Gerry McGovern

@Lyle In the Oregon case, they forced them to disclose and pay costs.

Gerry McGovern

Democratic rights have become a Big Tech trade secret. Google imposed a gag order on city officials elected by the public, warning them that they must not tell the public anything about the Google project, particularly how much public water Google was taking. Using a slew of aliases to buy land, getting secret tax breaks, getting electricity at less than half of what ordinary people pay, being sold public land for less than half the market value, all in secret, this is how Big Tech rolls.

Angie 🇵🇸🇺🇦

@gerrymcgovern

1998: "Do no evil!" 🙏

2024: "Holy motherfucking shit, have you tried snorting pure uncut evil off a stripper's ass? Got-DAMN, come over here, you gotta try this shit! GYATT!" :02smug:

Mastodon Migration

@angiebaby @gerrymcgovern

They've really come a long way.

Chitchat

@gerrymcgovern how on earth is Google imposing gag orders? Is that done through the courts?

Everything is sooooo messed up these days

BroGle

@gerrymcgovern a combo of two - being buddy-buddy with rich and trying to bring businesses at all costs to their area in order to look good in front of unsuspecting hard working citizens

Gerry McGovern

Making public officials promise that if any taxpayers file official requests for information, Google will be the first to know, this is how our democracy is stolen. Every day, we sell our democracy and basic rights to Big Tech for convenience, “cheap” data storage, some always-on entertainment and a few “free” services. We sell ourselves and our environment so cheap.

The Divine Kestrel

We live here. My wife is intimately involved. It's even more sketchy and scary than @gerrymcgovern makes it sound in this thread.

Personne

@gerrymcgovern This is how fascism starts. And no, it's not an exaggeration; check the role of Krupps, BMW, Volkswagen, Bayer, and Commerzbank, for example, in supporting and having secret agreements with the German government during the 1930's and all the way to 1945. If private companies can operate in secret, evading public scrutiny on deals involving public property and consequences for the general public, then...you don't have a democracy anymore.

Kierkegaanks, π/🦴

@gerrymcgovern the corpo lawyer who came up with trade secret water use should be put in blocks in front of their main church until 7/4

Kitchen Priestess (She/Her)

@gerrymcgovern

We need more local activists to get ordinances passed forbidding tax breaks or incentives to for-profit companies.

HighlandLawyer

@gerrymcgovern
Crass though it may be to make fun of a typo, it may be appropriate that the use of pubic water being a trade secret is a load of piss.

lin11c

@gerrymcgovern
Why do these mega companies get tax breaks? They should be paying a tax premium to set up business in a state.

Gerry McGovern

@lin11c They play one poor or ambitious region against another. They are constantly on the look out for tax loopholes, anything to avoid. They try and subcontract and outsource where possible, anything to avoid decent jobs because decent jobs hurts their voracious hunger for more profits, more power.

Big Tech--the most powerful companies in the world--are on corporate welfare. Always with their greedy hands out for more, more, more. No wonder they trade in secrecy.

lin11c

@gerrymcgovern
I know!! It drive me crazy! I wonder it these politicians get kickbacks. That seems to be the only thing they care about these days. The corruption really is that bad now.

Matt Palmer

@lin11c @gerrymcgovern no no, kickbacks and other forms of bribery are illegal, and nobody would ever suggest our fine, upstanding elected officials would do anything illegal. However, it's perfectly above board for politicians to move on to well paid positions as consultants and lobbyists when their time in elected office is complete.

lin11c

@womble @gerrymcgovern
Oh please. Case in point: Clarence Thomas. The king of bribes. #DonTheCon's inaugural committee. Just two examples.

Matt Palmer

@lin11c @gerrymcgovern I see I'm going to have to add /s to even more of my posts...

Randy

@gerrymcgovern @lin11c every era is the same. It used to be big tobacco, or big oil, or big steel. The problem is capitalism. People will inherently do everything they can to hoard resources. I don’t think people understand the possibly of a post resource scarcity world.

lin11c

@randy5235 @gerrymcgovern
It's the tanking of almost all anti-trust legislation that has destroyed us. We are enshittified the most in the media because it is simply a billionaire disinformation sewer now. I remember when people were raising alarms back in the 90s.

lin11c

@acm_redfox
Yes I know, that is the claim. I know in NYC what they were getting in tax breaks was much greater than the "jobs" they were bringing. They still snuck in somehow.

rothko

@lin11c @gerrymcgovern it's basically "we'll provide your city with jobs if you give us this tax break; if not, we'll go somewhere else with our jobs."

or, conversely, "hey big tech, we'll give you massive tax breaks if you bring us more jobs."

taking hostages, or bribery -- either way it's disgusting.

lin11c

@rothko @gerrymcgovern
These mega corps lie about how many jobs are actually created. With AI, forget about jobs. They will need even more water and power to run that machine. Once they are embedded in the community they will hide information and control litigation. No way to fight them and their limitless funds.

Gerry McGovern

@rothko
And the weird thing about data centers is that they bring hardly any jobs, maybe 20-50 for a typical large data center, and lots of those jobs are low paying contract or security work. It's a scam.

@lin11c

Bill0004

@gerrymcgovern The Dalles is less than a two hour drive from where I live. It's a pretty small community and giving that kind of tax break revenue had to be subsidized by the state of Oregon and possibly the federal government. Still doesn't make Google's claim any less ridiculous, however The Dalles is adjacent to the Columbia River which is rather massive, and i don't know what the water infrastructure looks like out there.

Kim

@gerrymcgovern I hope no one gets the idea to sabotage the water pipes or damm the supply in the middle of the night.

Jo Momma

@gerrymcgovern is this why our water tastes like paint thinner now? I know I'm not the only one who noticed, the water section of WinCo is always nearly sold out and there is always a line at the dispenser... both new occurrences since 2020

Ralph058

@gerrymcgovern This ridiculous. There is no reason that they couldn't be using closed cycle phase transition (vapor) cooling. They only needed to acquire a small amount of fresh water. The secondary cooling (to return the vapor back to liquid) can be any water, even seawater.
In fact, it could be designed to desalinate by evaporation and return the brine to the sea, OR to mine lithium before returning the brine to the sea.

Joe

@gerrymcgovern , that should be the point where we all start to de-google all our devices.
Let's face it, bar one or two a load of Google apps are superfluous.
The 21 century should already be a time where our environment/we come first.

Ian Douglas Scott

@Antigrav @gerrymcgovern Luckily Google makes this easier by preemptively shutting down all the Google services you're using.

Bernie Does It

@gerrymcgovern I have a feeling that if I wrote "this is a trade secret" on my tax return it wouldn't go well for me.

Joe Heafner

@gerrymcgovern @msbellows Why is this legal? I would’ve told Google to kiss it and pound sand.

M.S. Bellows, Jr.

@heafnerj @gerrymcgovern Oregon Revised Statute 192.345 Public records conditionally exempt from disclosure: "The following public records are exempt from disclosure under ORS 192.311 to 192.478 unless the public interest requires disclosure in the particular instance: ... (2) Trade secrets. 'Trade secrets,' as used in this section, may include, but are not limited to, any formula, plan, pattern, process, tool, mechanism, compound, procedure, production data, or compilation of information which is not patented, which is known only to certain individuals within an organization and which is used in a business it conducts, having actual or potential commercial value, and which gives its user an opportunity to obtain a business advantage over competitors who do not know or use it."

@heafnerj @gerrymcgovern Oregon Revised Statute 192.345 Public records conditionally exempt from disclosure: "The following public records are exempt from disclosure under ORS 192.311 to 192.478 unless the public interest requires disclosure in the particular instance: ... (2) Trade secrets. 'Trade secrets,' as used in this section, may include, but are not limited to, any formula, plan, pattern, process, tool, mechanism, compound, procedure, production data, or compilation of information which is...

Joe Heafner

@msbellows @gerrymcgovern In this case it was obviously a threat. I would call the bluff.

JohnW

@gerrymcgovern

Interesting. It looks like that data is being released though, probably due to pressure from the public and dwindling water supply.

(Credit KGW8)

"Google's data centers used 355 million gallons of The Dalles' water last year (2021), 29% of the city's total water consumption."

kgw.com/article/money/business

Gerry McGovern

@the_Effekt They were forced to disclose. But then they go to other places and try and bully their way around.

JohnW

@gerrymcgovern

Definitely. I'm sure they would try to keep that data as buttoned up as possible even if it leaks in certain locales.

Deriamis

@gerrymcgovern @mastodonmigration Hey, do you remember Google’s old motto? I do. It was “don’t be evil.” Those were good times, amirite?

🇵🇸 Álvaro González

@gerrymcgovern Google went pretty swiftly from "Don't be evil" to "Yes, we do genocide".

Erin Kissane

@gerrymcgovern It's even worse than this suggests — rather than the Oregonian suing for access, the city of The Dalles actually *sued The Oregonian* in a "reverse public records lawsuit" to prevent the paper from disclosing the data, despite their county District Attorney having already ruled that the information should be disclosed.

Google funded the suit until the press got too bad and then pulled out, so the city settled.

datacenterdynamics.com/en/news

rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregoni

@gerrymcgovern It's even worse than this suggests — rather than the Oregonian suing for access, the city of The Dalles actually *sued The Oregonian* in a "reverse public records lawsuit" to prevent the paper from disclosing the data, despite their county District Attorney having already ruled that the information should be disclosed.

Erin Kissane

@gerrymcgovern (I live in Oregon and watch the big public records cases fairly closely and this was such a clusterfuck.)

Mark Taylor

@kissane @gerrymcgovern Ah, so that's how you organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Gerry McGovern

@kissane
Wow, I actually didn't know that. Thanks for pointing it out. It's just so terrible.

Reay Jespersen

@gerrymcgovern @mhoye Wondering if I could get away with that at a job. Just do something totally unexpected and with zero regard for anyone around me and if anyone starts to ask questions, just tell them that no one had been told previously because it was my trade secret.

mhoye

@reay @gerrymcgovern Helps to be a billion dollar megacorp, that's where I'd start.

Reay Jespersen

@mhoye @gerrymcgovern Just reminded that this is almost always the start of people with crazy wealth: First, get some seed money of $1,000,000-$100,000,000 from your family.

Next, be lauded years later by the media as being a self-made billionaire.

Baloo Uriza

@gerrymcgovern The fuck? I thought like 80% of the reason they built in an old aluminum plant was because it came with two turbines at The Dalles Dam next door and direct access to Columbia River water so they wouldn't have to use city water...

Also there's a Dallas, Oregon and the Marion County road department thinks it's funny to post The Dalles signs pointing in the opposite direction of Dallas signs, even though there's no reason to post The Dalles anywhere in the county...

Kyle Memoir

@gerrymcgovern

Sounds like what Stratford Ontario citizens were up against in fighting a secret deal to bring a Chinese glass factory to town.

We already have a giant banking data centre here drawing water for cooling, along with many high tech auto supply firms and a growing population - all reliant on an aquifer whose health and sustainability rarely & barely receive mention.

A few years ago, our council was voted “most secretive” in #Canada

cbc.ca/news/canada/london/xiny

#environment #water

@gerrymcgovern

Sounds like what Stratford Ontario citizens were up against in fighting a secret deal to bring a Chinese glass factory to town.

We already have a giant banking data centre here drawing water for cooling, along with many high tech auto supply firms and a growing population - all reliant on an aquifer whose health and sustainability rarely & barely receive mention.

Kyle Memoir

@gerrymcgovern

And we do well to bear in mind it never ends; the fight is never over with a civic leadership so divorced from the community’s overall interest and stake in things:

cbc.ca/news/canada/london/stra

Go Up